


Late Light

by recreational



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Angry Sex, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Reichenbach, Romance, Slash, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-02 19:02:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 50,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1060419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recreational/pseuds/recreational
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new life, a career - nothing could snatch that away from John again. Or so he thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The newspaper

**Author's Note:**

> Along comes Batik and says she'll do a bit of 'tweaking' here and there in the story :) Don't think I didn't realise the wonderful work you do with it! Tweaking, yeah, understatement of the year :D  
> To whom the story read somewhat familiar: I moved it here from an old account on ao3 to give it a much needed brush-up and to have it with me, because although it's already over a year old, I still love that fic for reasons I can't explain :D Thanks to my former beta Epimeliad and to Walkerbaby, who took it upon them to beta the first version of the story.

‘Coffee, sir?’

John looked up from the folder in front of him.

‘Yes, thank you, Pamela.’

‘And your newspaper. Sir, you should really have a little break.’

He had delved into the numbers again and compared them to what he was seeing on the monitor, but when he turned back to his papers, he found that his secretary had placed the folded Telegraph on the printouts. Frowning, he tried to sanction her actions, but Pamela had already slipped out of the room without him noticing. She knew him too well.

And she was right, like always.

He had bolted from his flat in Acton without having had breakfast to take the Central Line to St. Paul’s and walk the rest of the way to Barts’ on foot. Since seven that morning, he had been sitting in his office, checking guidelines and statistics, and he’d barely touched the sandwich from the vending machine.

John relaxed and the ergonomic backrest gave way. Softly, he massaged his temples and breathed in deeply. A short break didn’t seem like an impossible luxury, the reports for the NHS Trust weren’t due until the following morning and there were only a few details missing.

Satisfied, he sipped his coffee, opened the newspaper and scanned the headlines.  
After Greece, Portugal had quit the Eurozone – he silently thanked God for the British pound – and the stock exchanges were going absolutely ballistic. But John didn’t worry enough about his insignificant savings to keep him up at night. Comments, remarks on domestic policy; John skimmed some pages without great interest and he probably would have ignored the short article in the London section, had the word ‘detective’ not rung his well-suppressed, but never completely switched off, warning bell.

So he read the rest of the small notice, barely ten lines long, and only peripherally realised how the spilled coffee was seeping through the other pages of the newspaper and the documents underneath. He heard his smartphone vibrate somewhere far away, and he could no longer tell the differences between colours, perceive movements or feel the ever-present subtle pain of his leg.

‘Dead detective re-emerges’, it said in unobtrusive letters. ‘Former Internet phenomenon Sherlock Holmes has cleared his name after vanishing for two years. Scotland Yard confirms the information but said further information will not be disclosed. Why the detective had been declared dead is a fact on which the police chose not to elaborate.’

Two years, those two years, summed up in so few lines, forcing John’s mind back to the time he had so desperately tried to forget.

In the first ten weeks, his therapist had given him a sick note and made him start taking antidepressants. But as apathetic and empty as he felt, she could have prescribed him fango and meditation, it was all the same to him. He took the drugs, good doctor that he was, and following her advice, he forced himself to confront the truth: that the events were irreversible and his friend would not return.

Every other day, he stood at Sherlock’s grave, polished the black granite a little, talked to him, sat in the damp grass, wandered aimlessly around the cemetery and returned to Baker Street. But nothing happened to him. The emptiness was still the same, just dulled by the chemicals.

It must have been Mrs Hudson who had asked Sarah to look after him a little more, although she already did her share, what with the tea, the biscuits and the invitations to breakfast. He still did not know if Sarah had acted out of some sincere desire or just out of pity, but it had never really interested him. Because the end of this story seemed to be predictable from the beginning, although both of them tried their best to keep the relationship going for some weeks.

During their short-lived fling, he had taken her to a pub on a Sunday evening, just to meet Greg and some colleagues. Like on the other occasions, he mostly talked to Greg. He seemed to be the only person who at least remotely understood what they had lost, although they never exchanged a single word about Sherlock. Sarah’s relationship to Sherlock had always been rather distant and John could not shake the impression that this was the reason why he never formed a connection to her.

‘John, sorry, my schedule is quite tight tomorrow, I have to run,’ she said and kissed him lightly on the cheek before embracing him quickly.

‘But Sarah, you can’t got yet,’ Greg chided. ‘I also have to leave, and then John will be all alone.’

Sarah laughed, turned around and vanished in the crowd.

‘Well, old boy,’ the detective inspector joked. ‘Get us another pint and after that I’ll have to strike my colours, too.’

John shrugged in exaggerated resignation, waved and signalled the bartender to bring two more glasses. When they were placed before them, rapidly losing foam, both men stared at the display until Greg managed to pull out of his reverie.

‘To the Queen, the pound and Big Ben!’ he saluted and they clinked glasses. ‘Ha ha, to what we love,’ he added and drank the beer in deep swallows.

John realised his hand was shaking and it was only with pure force that he managed to get the bitter beverage down his throat. Surely, this had not escaped Greg’s attention, but he did not remark on it, choosing instead to begin a conversation about budget cuts for the police and in the health system until he looked at his watch.

‘Closing time for me,’ he said, holding up his hands by way of an apology.  
‘It’s all right,’ John said. ‘The ones on sick leave will keep the vigil.’

And who else was supposed to fill the pubs apart from the psychologically crippled, John thought, getting up to shake Greg’s hand and receiving a hearty slap on his shoulder in return.

‘Think about it. The offer still stands, at least at the weekends, we could do some sport. It’s not just me that’d benefit,’ the detective inspector said with a pointed look at John’s hips.

Bloody antidepressants! He directed his view toward Greg’s growing belly and retaliated:

‘You’re right, you know … I’ll phone you, OK?’

Greg smiled, walked in the direction of the exit and tried to leave at the same time a group of people squeezed through the door. Judging by their clothes, they were bankers in their mid-twenties and also slightly drunk. They pressed their way around Greg, who robustly attempted to achieve his freedom, laughing and cracking jokes, disinhibited by the alcohol.

A typical scene in London – but John stared.

The man was a couple of inches taller than John, slim – a little too slim perhaps – but he filled out his expensive suit perfectly. He was somehow a little too graceful in his movements, scanning his surroundings attentively but at the same time partaking in an animated conversation with his friends. A lot of young men looked like that, cool elegance coupled with something the magazines called ‘metrosexuality’.

John would have disregarded him like he did juvenile antics all the time, had it not been for the eyes and his hair. Right when the man entered the pub, his curly brown mop had caught John’s eye, a haircut remotely visible, but not too short, tamed in its movements over forehead and neck.  
And the eyes that always seemed to be searching for something – big, pale lids nearly without folds and slightly slanted – and directed toward him! John managed an embarrassed smile, experienced the feeling of being scrutinized, and then the seat next to him was taken.

‘Hi! See something you liked?’

All right, this turn of events was a bit sudden. Not knowing what to do, John squirmed in his seat, though the alcohol slowly entered an unholy alliance with his medication and helped him along.

‘You remind me of someone and … it threw me off a little. Sorry.’ Green, the eyes were green. ‘But the similarities are much bigger from a distance.’

He stopped – that had not sounded particularly nice and he tried again. ‘But … that … well, that does not mean that … you’re not attractive.’

His new companion seemed to be satisfied with the explanation and he indicated to the bartender to serve them two more glasses. John sighed inwardly. It would be rather rude to go, but his system would not be able to deal with a lot more alcohol. There was only one solution.

‘Thanks, I’m John.’

‘Seamus.’

Glasses clinked.

‘Now, Seamus, what are you doing in your life apart from fooling around in big business and juggling millions with a press of a button, playing squash, caring for your body and controlling a latent case of anorexia?’

That was the second that always decided everything. That had decided everything for him – but he pushed away that thought quickly.

Seamus looked at him incredulously and showed a broad smile featuring most of his upper row of teeth.

‘That was… totally… incredible! How did you do that?’

Card in the wallet when he paid, callouses on the hands, angle of the wrist, manicure, lack of minerals shown on the fingernails, throat-neck-ratio, traces on the front teeth … John interrupted his train of thought.

‘It’s a habit … observation, no mystery at all,’ he remarked with forced casualness.

‘Wow, you’re not only hot, you’ve got brains, too,’ Seamus grinned. ‘So, what do you do for a living?’

An hour and two shots later, John was used to Seamus’ constantly wandering fingers, had stopped playing down the man’s flirting with ironic comments and agreed to share a taxi without even thinking about it. While he was at it, he accepted the invitation for coffee. The tongue in his mouth – and the hand under his shirt, and around his dick – also didn’t seem like problems.

As drunk as he was, he momentarily wondered how he was hard at all, but the soft locks in his face, the bony but strong body that pressed him against the sofa and the pale eyes aimed at him from time to time, made him forget many of the finer details of the situation. The same might explain how he ended up rubbing a near-stranger’s penis as if it were his own, and how he came at hand of that man, with an all-foo-familiar name of his lips that had recently been reserved for a piece of granite.

Seamus seemed not to have realised John’s blunder or chose to ignore it and joked a bit breathlessly that the next time they should try to make it to the bed. John nodded, carefully avoiding an answer, and handed him a box of tissues, so both of them could wipe away the traces of their activities. Then the younger man eased his way into the kitchen.

‘What about a coffee now?’ he called.

‘That would be great, thank you,’ John answered and followed him.

He must have taken a taxi to Baker Street, but he honestly couldn’t remember. That he had cried for the first time, completely unrestrained and for hours, he needed no help to recollect. His reflection in the mirror told him this clearly the next morning. The doctor in him observed the damage in his eyes – the shadows under them even darker than usual, the swollen lids and red rims. Those visible symptoms combined with the invisible – a headache and nausea. And a deep hole that would eventually swallow him with no way to return.

Yet the human being that he was – and maybe he should have listened to this part of himself more often – no longer wanted to simply observe, to spot symptoms and hope they would get better, be it through professional help or medication. If one thing proved that his life was slipping away from him, it was that he, a self-proclaimed heterosexual, had just had a one-night-stand with another man, just because that man vaguely resembled his friend.

Although Sherlock had been dead for months, he was still affecting his entire life – and this realization made John absolutely furious.

The bastard had left him with nothing but a few jumbled words. John would never believe them – there must have been another reason, but that would always be Sherlock’s secret. And John had to live with it, accept the ruin of their reputation, accept his own ignorance and loss. But he was a soldier, damn it, and he knew when it was time to lay down arms and when it was still worth fighting.

Floating on the anger he felt, he packed his things the next morning, putting most of them in storage and taking only some necessary clothes and other items with him when he moved to a hotel. Mrs Hudson had chattered along while he moved about the flat, but the sound had been rather reassuring, so maybe she also understood that his staying at the Baker Street flat would not cure him.

That evening, he met Sarah in the hotel’s restaurant and explained to her why their relationship did not have a future, carefully leaving out the events of the night before. Because the core of the problem didn’t change, no matter how you looked at it: His past was too much of a wreck, and so was he, and he could only be a liability for others.

Just like Mrs Hudson, Sarah only reluctantly contradicted him. No surprise.

The small flat in Acton was conveniently located and did not add considerably to his commute to work – an important reason to rent it, because that was what he wanted to do: work. For so long, he’d been in someone else’s shadow, but now he could finally achieve something of his own.

Slowly, John stopped taking his medication. He worked full time, successfully applied for the position of a consultant and completed his degree in hospital administration in one year. He did not call Mrs Hudson anymore. He ignored Molly’s big, sad eyes as they followed him in the hallway and greeted her only curtly. He stopped going to the cemetery.

He started going for a jog with Greg every Sunday and they met for a beer every Thursday. Two months earlier, he had been promoted head administrator and worked his way into the job like mad. He felt needed, useful. He was free again.

Until a tiny news article changed it all.

 

 


	2. The investigation

‘Shit,’ John swore and tore his hand away from the wet paper. He called for Pamela, who miraculously produced some Kleenex and helped him dry everything. Then he got out an extra shirt, changed and just as automatically hit the office cupboard with his fist.

There it was again, the anger that had helped him build a new life, and with it came the bitterness that had made his former existence seem so unbearable. John rubbed his red knuckles and stared outside the window, seeing only the reflection of his face in the glass.

 _I’ll be damned if I allow everything to start again,_ he thought furiously. And Sherlock? If even the newspaper had got wind of his resurrection – John could not repress a grunt at that – then he must have been back for a long time. Greg had not acted differently, although John conceded in retrospect that he had become a little bit withdrawn, talking more about John’s work and interests and less about what was going on at the Yard.

 _Hell, no matter how much Greg knows, it’s Sherlock’s responsibility to contact me,_ John cursed. A text message reading, ‘Not dead, SH’ would have been enough!

But did he want that life back? His clenched fists and gritted teeth told him that he didn’t. For the first time, his life belonged to him, not to his family, not to the army, and especially not to a self-proclaimed consulting detective who could be dead or alive, friend or ignorant arsehole, just as he pleased.

Meeting Greg the following evening was a challenge. The inspector was remarkably subdued, sipping his beer, lost in thought and barely following John’s animated account of the Arsenal match a few days ago. In turn, John refused to let on that he knew anything about Sherlock’s return. He especially paid no attention to Greg’s long-winded questions about the previous day’s newspaper articles. In the end, Greg nevertheless plucked up his courage to bring up the subject.

‘John, something has happened … I … don’t know how to put it, actually … It’s absolutely crazy, you know, just thinking about it. Well … Sherlock …’

‘He’s alive.’

With an uncontrolled movement of his hand, the DI partially poured his beer over the counter.

‘You know?’

‘Of course, I know,’ John muttered. ‘It was in the papers. _Everyone_ knows it.’

Greg’s features became a little pinched.

‘Yes, that. Well, that was a rather accidental development. Someone at the Yard must have tipped off the media. But I can explain that …’

‘Greg!’ John interrupted him. ‘You don’t have to explain anything to me. Look, I don’t want to know about it! No one …’ He paused to fill his lungs with much needed air. ‘Do you have any idea how it was … for me? Then? I saw him, Greg, when he …’ he swallowed hard, ‘when he jumped. When he was lying in his blood … And I was out of my depth. Shit, Greg. You know I barely survived it … it was just … too much.’

He tried to get a grip on his breathing and overcome the feeling of being choked. Greg patted him on the back and the panic slowly subsided. John looked the other man straight in the eye.

‘Never again, you got me? I never want to feel like that again. There is no way in hell that I’m going to return to that life and Greg, honestly, if I look at the role assigned to me in this resurrection, well, I don’t seem to have been assigned a role.’

Greg turned his head and stared into his beer.

‘It’s for the best, I guess,’ he mumbled, and John was on the brink of asking him if he knew anything apart from what had been in the paper. Yet pressing Greg for details would betray his own declaration that he wanted a clean break from the old life, and the emotional turmoil just a minute ago was proof enough that he should be firm in this decision.  

Thankfully Greg didn’t bring up the subject again and during Sunday’s jog they returned to their usual small talk. The newspapers didn’t write anything new about Sherlock and, for a while, John got the impression that his wish was becoming reality without any effort on his part. But while he tried his best to pretend everything was normal again, he knew he was just delaying the inevitable.

***

‘Sir?’ Pamela looked through the crack of John’s office door.

‘One moment. Yes?’ John saved the document and looked up.

‘Scotland Yard will be in the morgue soon. Do you want to …?’

 _A good question, really,_ John thought to himself. What exactly was he doing down there every time an unidentified body was brought in? Minutes before Molly or someone of the police arrived?

On his way to the basement, he shook his head. He just couldn’t stop himself, the same way he couldn’t stem the incessant flood of information and the conclusions he drew from it – much to the irritation of everyone around him. He just couldn’t resist the urge to be the first to solve the mystery of the John or Jane Doe lying on the cold steel table.

No matter how he surrounded himself with files and conferences, there were always details lurking, exposing an employee’s excuse or keeping the staff in a budget meeting until deep into the night -- or the husband of a headless body behind bars, like a couple of months ago.

John intently prayed for this view of the world to stop, but his life with Sherlock seemed to have genetically manipulated him, as if he was confined to act according to a new programme.

He opened the door to the mortuary and quickly marched toward the table. The zipper opened without getting stuck for a change, but John’s arm stilled suddenly, his shoulders dropping imperceptibly. Frozen to the spot he stared at the well-known face.

‘Sorry, Adrik,’ he said quietly, at the same time bracing himself for the arrival of the two men he heard walking down the corridor. Greg’s voice was easily discernible; it was still resonating in the hallway as the other person entered the room. A dark coat hurrying to the front end of the table – and all John could think to do was train his eyes on the door again.

 _Focus on Greg,_ he commanded himself. Grabbing hold of one of the table's edges to keep steady, he forced himself to look at the inspector who came into the room a bit breathless. As if he knew exactly what John was trying to tell him, Greg’s glance was a mix of  shame and a plea for understanding, accepting John’s silent but furious reaction with calm resignation.

‘Why has the bag been opened?’ The characteristic baritone sounded through the room before the zipper was being pulled down completely. ‘This man was obviously asphyxiated. Boring. No documents, identification, no clothes, but he had a job, he is well-groomed, maybe a little too well-groomed.’

John heard a sniff.

‘Aseptic lotion on the hands, possibly someone working in the health business. He had had appendicitis, the state of his scar shows the case must have occurred during his childhood, the stitch pattern indicating the surgery likely was performed in the former Eastern bloc. A rather old-fashioned surgeon, if one …’

‘Adrik.’

John felt them looking, but kept his head down, counting the tiles under his feet.

‘Sorry John?’ It was Greg.

‘His name was Adrik. Adrik Petrovsky, 29 years old. He has worked here as a facility manager for two months, a sort of intermediary between the stations, janitors, craftsmen and the cleaning personnel. He was hired during the big quality offensive, maybe you remember that, when the deep-cleaning because of multi-resistant hospital bugs started. I supervised the process; it was my first big task as a head administrator.’ He peeked at Greg. ‘He’s married with a child.’

John chose to ignore the condescending snort that came from his right. Yet he couldn’t suppress the feeling of being barely 3 feet tall, meaningless and irrelevant – as if the past two years had not happened at all.

‘I was very thorough with the background checks,’ he told Greg. ‘He came from a stable family, solid education and no criminal record. Sure, you can never be completely certain, but I think …’

‘Lestrade! I need samples of what’s under his nails and a hair analysis. As quickly as possible. It’s of the greatest importance that his stomach content is examined. Preferably with a mass spectrometer.’

The DI nodded and hot rage started to boil in John. He tried to pull himself together but knew his patience would snap at any second. It was time to put a stop to this.

‘And why is that?’ The question was left hanging in the air, not being directed at anyone in particular. Greg attempted to salvage the situation.

‘Well, John, those are standard procedures …’

John narrowed his eyes to slits.

‘Could you please show me the regulation that demands that stomach content be examined with a mass spectrometer? In contrast to you, _I_ have read the regulations, and I will not have every Tom, Dick and Harry waltzing in here and ordering complex procedures.’

The inspector raised his eyebrows in surprise.

‘Come on, John,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We all want to achieve the same goal, don’t we? I know we might disrupt the sensitive administration of this hospital now and then, but in this case … I mean, he was one of yours!’

Of course he was, and in every other situation John wouldn’t have said a word. But the dance around the white elephant in the room strained his nerves to the utmost and Greg’s apologetic face only marginally helped him to calm down.

‘You’re right, I … we have to solve this case as quickly as possible, especially for his family.’

There it was again – a snort, nearly impossible to hear but for John as loud as a siren an inch from his face.

‘Excuse me. I forgot that you’re not interested in trivialities like that,’ he said acidly, forcing his head to turn to the side. And for the first time in two years and 25 days – not that he had counted – he looked at the face of the man for whom he had killed without hesitation.

It was as though time hadn’t moved at all – but only for a second. Then he saw the new lines around Sherlock’s eyes, the shorter hair, with just a hint of his former curls and some silver at the temples.

Yet other things were exactly the same, catapulting John back to another time. The collar of the coat that framed that long throat, the mouth that always seemed to judge from above with just the slightest trace of disdain – at least until blue-grey eyes spotted their victim.

‘ _Dr_ Watson.’

If it had been possible to strike somebody down with a title, John would have succumbed to the blow.

‘As you may know, we’re doing important work here. I can assure you that the hospital’s resources will only be required in the most urgent of cases. Of course I can explain to you,’ he said slowly, carefully pronouncing each syllable, ‘why this specific analysis is necessary, but I would surely be wasting your valuable time, Dr Watson.’

The arrogant fuck! How could he … after everything …? Lost in his anger, John briefly asked himself why it was always he who had to fight losing battles – against Harry’s alcoholism, in Afghanistan and every day as Sherlock’s flatmate.

‘You condescending wanker. What the bloody fuck are you thinking?’ he shouted, grabbing the man’s collar and pinning him with his gaze.

‘I have to make sure this hospital is working and that the _living_ get their share,’ he hissed, jerking his head once toward the floors above them. ‘Up there, lives can be saved by making sure that a competent doctor and the right equipment are at the right place at the right time, damn it. And their relatives don’t have a bloody mind palace from which they can delete my patients if something goes wrong!’

John was sure Sherlock had understood exactly what he was saying with that last comment, but it drew no reaction. No faint spasm, no blink, no telling sign that once only John had been able to see. Nothing.

‘For a doctor you lose your temper rather quickly, I must say. Not a very professional attitude.’

Gloved fingers touched his hands and, with controlled pressure, tried to pry them off, but John didn’t budge.

‘And for a detective, _Mr Holmes_ , you are a considerable idiot, I must say.’

Somewhere in the background, Greg coughed. John ignored him. When Sherlock tried to free himself with a jerk, John followed the movement and they both crashed into one of the wheeled carts before landing on the floor. With some luck, John had managed to keep the upper hand, pressing his knee into the detective’s chest.

‘Let me go, _doctor_ , or I …!’ Sherlock snarled.

‘Or what? You call the police? Surprise, they’re already here!’

Sherlock released one hand from where it was still trying to free his collar, using it instead to reach for John’s upper arm. The torsion was not visible to the untrained eye but it was well placed and John’s damaged shoulder seared with pain. Although it nearly took his breath away, John stared unflinchingly at the unmoved face below him.

‘It might come as a surprise to you,’ he sneered, bending down a little more until he thought he might pass out at any second. ‘But the times when you could hurt me are long gone.’

The steely eyes that met his still conveyed no emotion, so John moved back, stood up and left the room as quickly as possible. Only few paces away from the lift did he realise that Greg had followed him.

‘John, I’m very sorry, I didn’t know you were down here,’ Greg said contritely.

‘It’s not your fault,’ John answered. ‘I shouldn’t have … it’s just, he makes me so furious!’

He impatiently jabbed the button.

‘Ah, come on, he’s always been an arse,’ the DI grunted. ‘Listening to him, yadda, yadda, I’m the greatest, I see this and that and you see that beetle over there? I’m afraid, I have to tell you that the world’s going to end …’

John finally laughed at that, and Greg joined him.

‘You’ll be all right,” Greg said, ushering him into the lift. The doors closed and John heaved a sigh. Without Greg, he would have been doomed long ago.

***

The meeting with the deans of the hospital that afternoon turned out to be a complete disaster. Twice, he lost his train of thought and could only re-join the discussion after painstakingly asking for information. Returning to his office, he slammed his briefcase on the desk. How many sentences had Sherlock said to him? Five? Maybe six. Not much more, that was sure.

 _Just a couple of sentences and I’m beside myself with anger,_ he thought to himself as he cancelled the rest of his appointments for the day. Damn, why could the man still get to him that much?

Annoyed, John started to pack his things. He copied some files to his laptop to maybe finish them at home. Distribution of rooms, charts of employees, inventory lists ... he stopped. A thought teased at his mind -- the constant questions he had answered after hiring the new staff two months ago.

Adrik Petrovsky had had a relatively long commute to work and had asked him for a cupboard in which he could store a change of clothes. This was not customary at Barts’, but John organised an old locker for Adrik in a basement corridor. As a rather unconventional solution, this had not been recorded anywhere, meaning the police might not have searched it. John took off his jacket again, got out a small case of picklocks from the lowest drawer of his desk and, before he knew it, he was on his way to the basement for the second time that day.

It took a while to remember in which of the endless corridors he would find the locker. From the outside, it looked untouched, so John activated his rather rusty lockpicking skills. It was only a simple padlock, but John would have preferred a side cutter any day. Inside, he found an orderly stack of T-shirts, work shirts and trousers, socks – exactly what he had expected. He examined one piece of clothing after the other, a heap slowly forming next to the cupboard.

He checked the pockets of all the trousers and, in one pair of jeans, he felt something hard -- a key with the name of the production company and a number, but with no hint of where to find the matching lock. He pocketed it and continued his search.

Once all the clothes were strewn around him on the floor, John reached into the cupboard and examined the shelves, finding nothing but a piece of paper wedged between the door and the side panel. It also went into his pocket. Then he returned the clothes to the locker and secured it with the padlock, wincing at the thought of Greg finding the mess and confronting him about it.

Back in his office, John placed the key and paper on his desk and examined them. The key looked as if it belonged to some slightly advanced security level, the numbers implied a big building. But what building? If it were Barts’, the search for the matching lock would be endless.

And the scrap of paper? Mostly white but with an unusual texture, a little transparent even. Fine, straight lines met in its middle and in the corner he saw the notation “12/15” written by hand. Something about it seemed oddly familiar, but John just couldn’t place it and, after a couple of minutes, he caught himself entertaining an unsettling thought: What would Sherlock have done?

John looked at the paper again. If it seemed familiar to him then it most likely was and had something to do with the one place where he spent most of his time: the hospital. The paper was different from an ordinary file, even without taking the marking into account. If this was the twelfth sheet of fifteen, then those documents had to belong together in some logical form, a topic or a series. The lines were not printed but drawn, a clear sign of the time of its origin. The yellow tinge of the papers also pointed to that conclusion.

John jumped to his feet. He knew where he had seen this kind of paper: He had been looking at the hospital’s old blueprints in the archive a year ago as he considered a possible modernisation of the surgeries’ air-conditioning. But why did Petrovsky have the hospital’s blueprints? Something was not right and John got an extremely queasy feeling. Torn between the urge to go to the archive again and the need to find out about the purpose of the key, he grabbed the latter and phoned the switchboard.

‘Watson here, I need Howard. It’s urgent.’

The oldest janitor in the hospital was supposed to be in the outpatient department, and John started to run. Arriving there, he first had to ask several nurses before he found him in one of the more remote rooms, fastening a toe board.

‘Mr Howard,’ he panted. ‘I … have an important question.’ Slightly bent over, John cursed himself for not running twice a week.

With an exaggerated groan, the janitor got up and shuffled to him.

‘Do you know what lock this key might belong to?’ He held out his hand. ‘It was … found and I would like to match it to something.’

‘Brand new but the oldest registration on it, mmh. There are two possibilities. Some of the entrances to the chimneys have new locks to make sure the firemen can reach them easily. And the shafts for the old maintenance lifts in the west wing got new ones, too. Idiots. The old ones worked fine. But safety regulations, you know.’

Without another word, the janitor returned to his work and John turned this new information over in his head. You did not need blueprints for the chimneys; they were all visible from the outside. So it could only be the old lift shafts.

‘Just one last question: Which of the shafts are still out of use today?’

‘C1’ and ‘B1,’ Howard murmured and John knew where to go.

B1 was closest, so John started there. The key fit into the lock but couldn’t be turned. He was luckier in corridor C1, where the lock gave way and he was able to open the metal door. Yet when he started to step forward, he heard someone behind him.

‘Don’t move.’

And a gun pressed into his ribs.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, Batik, for the great care you take of that confusing bit of my early days of writing.


	3. The attack

Immediately feeling cold sweat on his forehead, John tried to rein in his fear. Thankfully, the weapon was not touching his back anymore and John heard the man fiddling with something.

‘Okay, no problem, I –’

‘Stop moving!’ John froze. He knew that voice. Hell, he could easily identify that penetrating baritone in a crowd.

‘Sherlock, why –?’

‘For the last time, stop moving before you touch the tripwire in front of you!’

Sherlock shone a torch’s beam into the shaft and leaned forward to have a look. John also risked a brief glimpse, but the vague outline of the containers and wires before him was enough to draw a terrifying conclusion.

‘Oh shit, bloody … shit! Is that a bomb?’

‘John, calm down. Just be still. Let me ...’

The spot of the torch wandered down to the floor and Sherlock with it. Carefully, he moved around the door frame.

‘I am going to take your right foot and guide it back. Rest on me if you lose your balance.’

Inch by inch, John’s foot was painstakingly moved away from the threshold. Then John felt hands grip him by the hips and lead him away two small steps before Sherlock suddenly yanked him backwards to put as much space as possible between them and the explosives. Losing his balance, John stumbled, his entire weight falling against the detective. Sherlock still held on to him, though, and they landed by the door to the corridor in an inelegant heap.

Gasping for air, John groaned under the pressure of the forearms that clutched his chest like a vice.

‘I think you can …’ he managed to utter before arms were suddenly loosened, allowing John to breathe again.

 _Now move a little to the side and lean against the wall, or to get up and phone Greg,_ he commanded his body, only to find that his system was paralyzed, legs like jelly and adrenalin coursing through his veins.

Half lying on Sherlock, he stayed where he was, feeling the strained rise and fall of the chest under him gradually slowing down. The buttons of the coat dug into the back of his head, but the warmth of Sherlock’s body against his shoulder was almost pleasurably soothing in contrast.

Peace.

At last, a moment of tranquility.

Something had been lurking in John’s mind, throwing him off track in recent days, but it now crawled up from the depths, hitting him full force. He squeezed his eyes shut and his chest constricted as if Sherlock were squeezing the life out of him again.

It was true. Really, undeniably true. Sherlock was alive – and although he had known it for all those days, talked about it with Greg, thought about it, Sherlock had still rather been a figment of his imagination. Just a few words on cheap newsprint.

John swallowed hard and forcefully tried to clear his throat, but to no avail. What was he going to say anyway? ‘Good to see you, let’s meet at Angelo’s sometime?’ There was a reason why he hadn’t embraced the idea that Sherlock was back, even after meeting him again.

The man he had encountered in the morgue was someone else, not the man he knew who would exchange jokes after a breathless dash through London and then have a cup of tea.

But, standing in front of the lift, just one step away from blowing up himself and half of the hospital, John was sure he had perceived a hint of what had so magnetically attracted him before. Transported back to the moment at the swimming pool when Sherlock had freed him of the vest with hectic fingers and panic in his eyes, John had thought to see the possessive commitment of the old days.

 _He still cares – somehow,_ John thought to himself, even as he considered new questions. If he turned around now, would he encounter the old Sherlock? Or would those cold eyes just stare at him again, searching for a weakness?

On the verge of turning his head, John stopped when he heard someone approaching. The door to their corridor opened and a man stepped in. From their spot on the floor, Sherlock and John didn’t attract immediate attention.

‘That’s him,’ Sherlock whispered.

Apparently hearing the noise, the technician whipped around, dropped his toolbox and raced back through the door.

‘Get off,’ Sherlock growled, giving John a push. He was gone before John managed to heave himself upright. Dashing after Sherlock, he reached the stairwell just as the door clicked shut. _Hopefully the two haven’t gone to the basement floor of the operating theatres,_ John thought, and opened the door again. The sound of a door closing one floor up confirmed his fear.

‘Fuck,’ he swore, relying a bit on the handrail as he took two steps at a time, arriving on the next floor just in time to see the tails of Sherlock’s coat vanishing around a corner.

John paused for breath. He’d never catch up with Sherlock this way. After a moment spent breathing and getting oriented, he fumbled for his key-card, feeling a plan forming. If he was lucky, the suspect would have to take a detour to avoid a number of doors and corridors for which he didn’t have clearance – doors John could open. He quickly scanned his card and raced down a hallway, apologizing to a startled nurse along the way.

In the next corridor he could actually see the two men he was chasing and took this as confirmation of his theory. He scanned the card again. Door, corridor, another near collision with a colleague. Then he reached the last door, stepping through it just as someone crashed into him. Catching a glimpse of blue work clothes, John tried to get a good grip on them. Instead, he was thrown off course and head first against the frame of an empty bed.

Almost knocked out by the impact, John pushed himself up from the floor and grabbed the frame to achieve a seated position. Where was Sherlock? A little hazy, he looked around and saw him lunge at the suspect and wrestle him to the floor. So everything was all right. No. Wasn’t there something …? With a pained grimace, John tried to collect his thoughts. The moment he succeeded, his fingers started hunting for his mobile.

‘Greg … you have to come to Barts’,’ he ground out.

 _‘I’m already on my way,’_ was the immediate answer.

‘You need a bomb squad, basement, C1.’

 _‘Bugger.’_ Greg’s voice sounded choked.

‘We have the guy. Surgery, corridor A.’

The line went dead before John could say another word. He looked up to see Sherlock advancing toward him, the technician in tow.

‘Greg was already on his way here.’ He shot Sherlock a sceptical look. ‘You didn’t call the police, did you? I mean, since when …?

‘It seemed to be an adequate way to deal with the situation. There was a considerable number of lives at stake.’

Frowning, Sherlock dragged the technician towards the toilets before pushing him inside. When he returned, he was alone and John assumed he had secured the suspect inside.

‘I need to look at this,’ Sherlock said without preamble.

‘What …?’ John started to ask, but Sherlock knelt, ignoring his words. Long, slender fingers were freed from leather gloves before taking one of the pillows from the bed and removing the pillowcase. John followed the actions with clueless bewilderment.

‘But I don’t need …’ John said as he finally caught on, falling silent when a warm hand was placed on his chin and cheek, as the other carefully dabbed at his temple.

‘It’s just a laceration, but you should go to the A&E, just in case.’

Turning the now bloody fabric to find a cleaner section, Sherlock went on wiping the wound, stabilizing John’s head with his other hand. Blinking against his confusion, John tried to process what was going on. Maybe it was his apparent head wound, but when he looked into those attentive eyes that were worriedly scanning for anything out of the ordinary, he saw the old Sherlock again. A line forming between his brows, lips slightly parted, with his tongue nervously pressing against the back of his front teeth – just like he had looked when bent over an experiment.

‘It doesn’t feel as if I fell on a bed. Feels more like the bed ran me over.’ John managed a pained smile and was rewarded with a slight quirk of Sherlock’s lips in return. He could work with that, he decided. But before he could figure out what to say next, Sherlock pushed the pillowcase into his hand, straightened and quickly walked down the corridor.

‘Lestrade, he’s in the toilet.’

Instead of angling towards the loo, the DI, who had just rounded the corner, turned towards John. Sherlock caught him by the arm, stopping him in his tracks.

‘Dr Watson has only a minor injury. He’ll find his way to the A&E.’

With that, Sherlock ushered Greg into the suspect’s makeshift jail and John – groaning – got up without assistance.

‘What an arse,’ he muttered, shuffling towards the stairs. Disregarding the fact that there was still a large amount of explosives in a lift shaft, he took himself to the A&E and let himself be patched up, sparing only an occasional thought for whatever was happening in the basement. The Yard’s bomb squad must have managed to deactivate the bomb and remove it from the hospital without evacuating the facility and John honestly wasn’t concerned at that moment to know how they’d done it.

Barely listening to what his colleague told him about rest and fluids, he overcame his dizziness long enough to take a taxi home, take some paracetamol and take himself to bed. It was an uncomfortable night – even the bandage felt like too much pressure on his skull by morning – but he began to feel his spirits returning around lunchtime. John was sure Greg wouldn’t call him until later, out of respect for his health, but he was a witness and deeply ingrained rituals led him to the Yard.

It was an odd feeling, returning to the Yard as an ordinary visitor, but he was allowed to pass the security checkpoint as if nothing had changed. He entered Greg’s office like he had so many times before – a little apprehensive but also excited – and exactly like in those past days, two pairs of eyes immediately snapped to his. John felt his headache return with a vengeance.

‘John, good to have you here,’ Greg said, jumping up to pull up another chair. ‘I just wanted to ask Sherlock how the heck you managed to end up down there in the basement. I mean, the both of you. That’s hardly a coincidence.’

John didn’t have to see it to know how much derision that word had put on Sherlock’s face.

‘Of course not,’ he heard Sherlock sneer. ‘When you were supporting the crying widow, I searched his desk. Nothing, not even in the computer – who chooses the first name of his child as his password? But in one of his jackets, I found a key for the London bicycle hire. Their service told me the last time he had activated a bike was near Bromley By-Bow, Devons Road, and that he had used the bike for exactly 35 minutes. During that time he could not have gone more than one and a half mile back and forth, but one mile is more likely if one takes into account the number of underground stations in the vicinity.’

Sherlock paused and John risked a glance. The detective looked at the DI expectantly, most likely waiting for him to continue the deductions that were so _obvious_. When Greg just raised his eyebrows, Sherlock continued with a frown.

‘Inside this radius, I activated the homeless network and investigated the shops in the area – a bakery, hairdresser, doctors, nothing out of the ordinary. But an electronics shop caught my attention. The owners were distracted by some customers, so I was able to look in the storage room, where I noticed a paper cup that can only still be acquired from a beverage machine at Barts’.’ Sherlock’s self-satisfied smile made Greg nervously twiddle with his biro and John could barely bite back a laugh.

‘And then?’ the DI asked, exasperated.

‘As I said, there is no such thing as chance,’ Sherlock declared. ‘There had to be a connection. So I went to the hospital and found the victim’s work area. I checked his appointments – not long ago, he had been in the archive. So I went there, found the blueprints, deduced which one was missing and asked Howard where to find the shafts in question. He told me Dr Watson had asked the same question just a moment earlier and then I, well, _accelerated_ my investigation.’

Again with this ‘Dr Watson’ nonsense. _What does he want to achieve by that?_ John asked himself. Though he might not understand the game Sherlock was playing at the moment, there was one thing he had read between the lines, no matter how much Sherlock had tried to gloss it over: After hearing that John might be in danger, Sherlock had run to the basement as quickly as possible.

‘And how did you know about the bomb?’ Greg asked.

‘I didn’t know, but it was a possibility. What I _did_ know was that it is not advisable to walk into an abandoned lift shaft without knowing what’s in there. Don’t mind the opinion of an amateur, though.’

The furious gaze accompanying the arrogant sneer unnerved John, but he put up with it, keeping in mind that his big-headed former flatmate had just saved his life. Nevertheless, he felt like voicing at least a feeble defence.

‘Everything _I_ had was a key from his locker. How could I have known that Petrovsky built bombs? And while we’re on the subject, _Mr Holmes_ … how did you know the man in the corridor was the culprit?’

‘I recognized him,’ Sherlock said. ‘He was one of the employees in the electronics shop.’

‘And what’s his connection to Petrovsky?’ John asked. ‘Were they members of a terror cell?’

‘As far as we know, they weren’t,’ Greg interceded. ‘We couldn’t find any explosives or chemicals on his clothes or in his house, he could only have helped with the transportation. We turned the shop upside down, but came up with nothing, and the rest of the staff don’t seem to know anything. They were already questioned last night, you see. There’s been no claim of responsibility, nothing on the Internet, absolutely nothing.’ Greg sighed.

‘So Petrovsky was just some low-ranking underling?’ John speculated. ‘Maybe because of his position in the hospital? He had access to many areas ...’

‘Yes, of course!’ Sherlock interjected. ‘That’s why the picture was so distorted. He didn’t have anything to do with the planning. He just was ordered to run some seemingly unrelated errands. And when he was asked to hand over the key, he might have put two and two together, but the suspect most likely used his family as leverage. When it became clear that Petrovsky wanted out, though, he was killed. Yes!’ He jumped up. ‘That’s it!’

John frowned and it seemed as if Sherlock nearly reacted like he had done in the old days, throwing John a helpless glance until a nod or a shake of the head informed him if he’d committed another blunder. But their eyes met for just a fraction of a second before Greg’s telephone rang and he left the office quickly, swearing elaborately at whoever was on the other end. Sherlock turned up his collar and walked toward the lift, John still fighting with his jacket along the way but determined to keep on Sherlock’s tail.

Sally Donovan leaned against her desk, a file in her hand, and sniffed when Sherlock passed.

‘Hey freak, heard you nearly blew up a hospital yesterday. Wouldn’t have troubled you either way, would it?’

Sherlock scoffed and walked on, no quip, no scathing remark, whereas John felt hot anger bubbling up in him. When he passed Donovan, he stopped and turned to her.

‘Sergeant Donovan.’ He held out his hand and she hesitatingly took it. ‘Nice to meet you again. It’s been a while.’ Not letting go of the hand, he raised it a little and studied it for a moment before he let it go with an exaggerated wink. He prepared to resume his path, but stopped after the first step.

‘Well, perhaps your biological clock isn’t quite as audible to Anderson as it is to you. But you’re right in furthering your career first.’

Without waiting for a reply, he started toward the lift, acutely aware of the daggers being stared at his back afterwards.

The lift had just arrived, but John had enough time to shoot Donovan a final look of contempt before the doors slid shut. His vague sense of victory vanished quickly as he found himself confined in the tiny elevator, alone with Sherlock, and John congratulated himself in advance for doing something he knew he’d soon regret. But somehow he had to make sense of what was happening. With almost grim determination, he turned to his left.

‘Sherlock, what –?’

‘No, John, not now.’ Sherlock was still training his eyes on the lift’s door.

‘What’s that supposed to mean? Not now? How can you just –?’

With a jerk, the detective turned towards him and stared him down with all of his superiority, be it height, intellect or both. But he didn’t manage the complete detachment that had become the norm since his return, John noted. Something made his eyes almost gentle, and the small lines seemed tortured rather than angry. The voice was as cutting as ever, though.

‘I said no,’ he rumbled, making the three words into a clear threat before turning away. John fixed his gaze on the floor, cursing his cowardice. Why did he always back down when Sherlock made a decision?

The lift stopped and the doors opened, revealing a throng of waiting people. Sherlock stepped forward and just before the coat vanished amid the waiting people – John was almost sure he hadn’t heard it at all – there might have been a soft, ‘Thank you … for before.’

In the taxi home, John came to the conclusion that he must have imagined that. Spying on his reflection in the car’s rearview mirror, John couldn’t wait to get home and take off the bandage on his head. He didn’t want to look like an invalid anymore, damn it, let alone be treated like a moron, but what could he do about that?

A while later, after cleaning his wound and putting a smaller plaster on it, he felt outwardly improved, though his inner turmoil remained unchanged. Complete chaos reigned in his mind, and he only slept fitfully after hours of mindless TV, a hot shower and an exceedingly boring book. His injury and the day’s activities had drained his physical energy, but his mind kept racing.

Sherlock had looked at him with cold eyes, had pulled him away from danger in panic, ignored him, cared for him, called him Dr Watson and then John again, abandoned him, thanked him … What the hell was going on? Was it his own fault? Could he not cope with the situation? Did he read too much into Sherlock’s reactions? Too little?

None of it made any sense and, although the night wore on, John’s thoughts led nowhere. Frustrated, he tossed and turned in his bed until he finally drifted into an uneasy sleep, completely exhausted – only to be woken up by his phone in the early morning. An unknown number had sent him a text.

_'Lestrade was kidnapped.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much, Batik, for still sticking with me although by now you realised what a bloody amount of work that means.


	4. The car

When John arrived at the Yard, everything seemed to take its normal nightly course – at first. But even in the entrance hall, it became clear that too many officials were about for this time of the night. Approaching the reception desk, he realised there was no way for him to get inside without Greg – he should have thought of that.

Phoning Donovan would be of no use, especially after the previous day. In a case like this, there was only one contact really worth trying. John sighed inwardly and moved into conspicuous view of one of the cameras in front of the building. _That’d better be worth it,_ he thought, and took out his phone to choose Harry’s number.

 _‘What the bloody –’_ he heard the tired voice of his sister grumbling when she finally picked up the phone.

‘Mycroft, send me a car. We need to talk.’ Fighting his bad conscience, John hung up without further explanation. There were more pressing issues than his sister’s sleep, such as finding a taxi at this hour.

His mobile announced a message and John waved down a cab. Reading out the address to the cabbie, he couldn’t help but wonder about Mycroft’s affection for industrial architecture. Sure, the buildings offered excellent opportunities for dramatic entrances, but they were invariably draughty and John felt the effect was wasted on him. Each time he was subjected to waiting in an abandoned warehouse, an old garage or a disused machine park, he grew less intimidated and more impatient.

When the taxi dropped him off at the half-finished office complex, he immediately pulled his jacket closer around him as chilly April winds blew along the wide street. He went inside the building and found it even colder, empty window frames making the draught worse. Peeking outside, he expected Mycroft’s arrival any minute, but after twenty minutes, there was still no one in sight. It wasn’t like Mycroft to be this late, so John was a bit relieved when he saw the car silently gliding up to him at last. It came to a smooth stop, the door opened, and first the umbrella, and then the man himself got out effortlessly.

‘Dr Watson,’ Mycroft said coolly as he strolled through the opening in the wall that would one day be a door.

‘Mycroft,’ John answered curtly. He would not get involved in unnecessary games with this Holmes. ‘Let’s get to the point. What do you know about Greg?’

‘I assure you, dear doctor, that we are doing everything we can to …’

So games it was. Without thinking, John grabbed the umbrella, ignored the man’s consternation, and threw it as far as he could. Then, with as much force as he could muster, he pushed Mycroft back once and was about to do it again when he managed to restrain himself.

‘Bloody hell. Save me that politically correct bullshit!’ he shouted instead. ‘I’m not an idiot! What did you gain by telling only half the truth the last time you tried that? Well? There’s one name that especially comes to mind, isn’t there?’

Mycroft squirmed under the weight of the accusations. Not in the literal sense, of course, but John noticed the movements of his eyes and the tensing of his jaw.

‘Listen to me, Dr Watson,’ he hissed. ‘We don’t know. The inspector was kidnapped from his flat this night. A neighbour saw that the lock had been tampered with, there were traces of a fight in the flat, and so he called the police. Apart from that, there’s only one piece of information: Whoever it was wants to obtain the release of the St Bartholomew’s bomber. There’s nothing else; no evidence, no CCTV material, no organisation claiming to be behind the deed.’

‘But then you’ve got an approach – the terrorist! If there’s no way around it, you have to organise an exchange!’

At that moment he could so very clearly tell that Mycroft was, indeed, Sherlock’s brother. After his last remark, Mycroft watched John with a detached displeasure, as if he were an experiment gone awry. It was a look he had seen in Sherlock hundreds of times.

‘Dr Watson, with all due respect, you know we don’t negotiate with terrorists.’

‘But it’s Greg! My God, Mycroft!’ John shouted furiously.

‘Doctor, I can understand your agitation,’ Mycroft said, betraying none himself. ‘But I have to repeat: There will be no negotiations. And the inspector could be anywhere in Europe by now. All the relevant agencies have been alerted, you can rest assured.’

John grunted disapprovingly and Mycroft took this as an indication to leave after carefully collecting his umbrella. Watching him walk away, John felt dejection settling on his shoulders. Without a new lead, there was just one thing he could do and he resigned himself to the fact that he had to start at the crime scene after all.

***

The street to which Greg had moved after splitting up with his wife was only moderately active at this early hour. Commuters were steering their cars out of their drives and garages, and children were on their way to school. On the pavement on the other side of the street, John counted his options. He had been dropped off just a couple of streets away – getting out in front of the house would have attracted attention. His chances of entering the building were slim, though. Two policemen were standing guard in front of the main entrance and there was a police car in sight. The rest of the force had arrived in unmarked police vehicles, the usual varieties blocking each available spot around the house.

Sighing, John sat down on the kerb. The flat itself was bound to be teeming with officers, even if he managed to get in, so he’d better bide his time.

‘Are you one of the police?’

A snub-nosed, approximately 6-year-old boy grinned at him.

‘No, I’m here because of my friend who … seems to be in trouble. _He’s_ a police officer though.’

‘Detective Inspector Lestrade?’ The boy’s excitement was obvious.

‘Yes, that’s right. Do you know him?’

The boy assumed a pose of utmost importance and explained patiently:

‘Of course, I know him. I’ll be a policeman one day, too. I see him when he comes home from work – sometimes he even drives a police car! But sometimes it’s a different car, like last night.’

John raised his head.

‘A different car? When?’

Conspiratorially, the boy looked around.

‘You won’t tell my mum, will you?’ he whispered. ‘She doesn’t want me to be up that late!’

With two fingers, John mimed a key and locked his mouth, which seemed to be sufficient as a promise.

‘It was about three when a dark car, a Renno I think, stopped over there.’ The boy pointed towards Greg’s house. ‘Two men went up and, when they came down again, they were three. One of them, the detective inspector, was stumbling a bit, I think he was rather tired. But I still remember part of the number plate. It was LB, then a number, then CAR. I thought that was funny.’

John had listened to the boy’s account incredulously. ‘Do you still remember the colour of the car?’ he asked when no new information was forthcoming.

‘Oh, that’s easy. It was white.’ The boy was visibly proud of that.

‘You know what?’ John smiled. ‘One day you’ll make a great policeman.’

The boy grinned in return and ran back to his house, just to be ushered into one of the cars down the street by his mother a little later. John stood up and purposefully walked towards the main road. From the taxi, he’d spotted a small café. Breakfast seemed like a good idea and, afterwards, he could directly start his investigation.

***

Two hours later, though, he still sat in the plainly furnished room, sipping on his third coffee. He hadn’t managed to eat anything because he had been too antsy, his frustration adding a healthy dose of anger as time wore on. Slowly but surely it was driving him crazy that all his attempts at turning the boy’s clues into real traces had come to nothing.

He had called an acquaintance at Scotland Yard, a policeman whom he once advised to see his dermatologist and whose mole had really been a malignant melanoma. It was time to call in the favour, although the doctor in him criticized him heavily for this action. Yet the only thing he learnt was that the Renault had been stolen the day before and the number plate must have been a fake.

He had repeatedly gone through the information, but what was he supposed to make of it? Frustrated, he paid and headed for Greg’s flat again. Maybe this time he would find a way to have a look around.

There were still members of the police there, so he hid in an entrance far enough from the house not to be seen, and waited. It had started to drizzle, but the noise of somebody impatiently shuffling across asphalt made him stick out his head regardless. Something in John had anticipated it and there he was: Leaning against the wall of the building a few feet away was Sherlock Holmes.

‘Good morning, John.’

‘Sherlock,’ he nodded, trying to rein in his emotions. Obviously, today it was ‘John’ again.

‘The investigation of his flat led to some minor findings,’ Sherlock began, unannounced. ‘Some clothes were missing, both short and long trousers, a sweatshirt, a T-shirt, underwear and, possibly, sandals. The police won’t have realised it because the criminals studiously avoided making a mess in the wardrobe. Some items from the medicine cabinet were missing as well – an antacid and a refill package of his preferred painkillers. It was clearly a carefully planned operation, which indicates they intend to hold Lestrade for a while. This also means he’s not in direct danger, because the kidnappers want to provide him with a certain amount of comfort. What did you find?’

John needed a moment to overcome his surprise. Normally, after listing his deductions, Sherlock only asked for his opinion if there was a body involved.

‘I have a part of the number plate,’ he said eventually, ‘white Renault, LB, the numbers are missing, then CAR.’

Quirking a smile at Sherlock, John was taken aback by the way his look was returned. It was disconcerting at first, being stared at as if he was the embodiment of Christmas and every single saint put together. Bewildered, John allowed his mind a second of weakness and recalled the few similar moments in wich he had seen Sherlock gazing at him with the exact same intensity – as if he was the only person in the world, a present he had never expected, filling him with dubious wonder and gratitude.

A wink was enough, and John snapped out of his reverie, shaking off his mind’s lingering fog and straightening.

‘The homeless network should be able to do something with this,’ Sherlock said and repeatedly hit the screen of his smartphone. ‘I’d like a coffee.’

‘This way.’

For the second time that day, he sat in the crammed café, with its sticky plastic tablecloths and the contrived cosiness of cheap prints on the walls. That the coffee was only barely tolerable had been a lesson well learnt in the early morning, so he opted for tea. Sherlock had been thinking intently during their walk and John waited patiently for some kind of information.

‘Nothing,’ the detective murmured, startling John, who would never have expected such a statement. ‘Without the car, I can’t say anything. We definitely need more evidence.’

John smiled. During the time they’d lived together, he had learnt to pick up on at least part of the subtext.

‘Sherlock, I’m worried, too. But you said yourself that the chances are good that Greg’s unhurt.’

‘At the moment!’ Sherlock started to fiddle with the teaspoon with nervous fingers. The next second, the utensil clattered on the tiles. ‘For God’s sake … I … can’t think like that!’

His hands tensed up around the napkin holder and John, who had just picked up the spoon, extracted the holder to save it from the same fate. He barely noticed that his fingers instinctively closed around Sherlock’s to keep them from fluttering about.

‘Calm down, okay? With so many people on the case something’s bound to come up eventually,’ John tried to reassure him in his most soothing voice.

Sherlock sneered derisively.

‘Idiots, incompetent beginners, morons,’ he ranted.

‘Yes, sure,’ John interrupted him, ‘but you’re also involved, aren’t you?’

Risking his slightly bashful smile, the one that was rather reserved for other occasions than reassuring a nervous flatmate, John stared straight into the grey and stormy sea of Sherlock’s eyes. That kind of restlessness was so unlike him that John acted almost automatically, holding his gaze and squeezing his fingers on impulse until something in Sherlock changed. John blinked in surprise at the widening of the eyes and the deep and quick intake of breath, when, like a haunting, everything was over. As if he had been caught out, Sherlock quickly pulled back his hands.

Almost on cue, the mobile announced a text and, after a cursory glance, Sherlock stormed out of the café. John whipped out a twenty before he pursued the other man, throwing it on the counter in passing. He even managed to clamber into the cab before Sherlock could leave him behind, and after a silent ride, they arrived in a narrow, unobtrusive side street. _Wynford Road,_ John read whilst Sherlock scanned the house fronts and then told the cabbie to stop next to a white Renault that stood parked in a long row of cars.

‘No CCTV. Clever.’

The locked doors of the old car didn’t present much of an obstacle and the detective started to scan everything inside with his magnifying glass, taking samples and putting them in tiny containers. Like so often, John felt a little useless, because to him the car looked empty. The few scraps of paper and the waste in the trays, the CDs and the sponge were unlikely to belong to the kidnappers who had stolen the car the day before.

‘But why here?’ Sherlock asked himself more than John.

‘You said it: no cameras.’

‘Yet if they had driven out of London, the cameras wouldn’t have been an issue at all. Why did they drive back into the city centre, just to park the car? That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Maybe someone waited here? Or they forgot something, I don’t know.’

‘No, with a carefully constructed plan like that, so thorough, so meticulous, they would never have taken the risk. What is there around here?’

The question wasn’t meant for John; it was an instruction for Sherlock’s mind palace. Sherlock closed his eyes.

‘St Pancras! They wanted to get him out of the country and what’s better than the 5.45 train from London to Paris? Impressive move,’ he finished his deliberations.

John frowned and Sherlock fell quiet. If this was really the case, they could forget about it, John thought to himself. Greg really could be anywhere.

‘He was right’, John mumbled.

‘Who was right?’ Consternation marked Sherlock’s voice.

‘Mycroft. He said Greg could be anywhere in Europe and that there was no chance of finding him.’

Sherlock’s face darkened and John instinctively took a step back from him and the car.

‘You talked to Mycroft?’ Now the undertone was rather threatening.

John pulled himself together and straightened his shoulders. Those running battles the brothers were fighting – he wouldn’t be a part of them anymore, especially not in this case.

‘Yes, I met with Mycroft, and of course I’m aware that everything he says is biased, but I think it is …’

Sherlock slammed the driver’s door and hurried around the car. Torn between beating a retreat and standing his ground, John was out-manoeuvred and backed up against the door to a nearby building before he knew it.

‘You contacted that two-faced snake? What did he use as bait? What did he promise you?’ Sherlock spat and John shrank away from him a little, meeting the resistance of the closed door. He thought of appeasing Sherlock, but his anger got the better of him.

‘What was I supposed to do? I –’

‘God, John, how stupid are you?’ Sherlock snarled, baring his teeth in an uncharacteristically primitive display of aggression.

 _I’m not going to take that kind of stuff lying down anymore_ , John told himself as he drew his shoulders back. He braced himself against the door and forced Sherlock off with a hard shove.

‘Stupid?’ he yelled. ‘Yes, sure, if _you_ say so! But what could I possibly do? I didn’t have any way to get information! I had nothing to go on!’ He took a step forward and pushed Sherlock again so he banged against the other side of the doorway and stared at him furiously. ‘I wanted to do something, damn it!’ With both hands he grabbed the coat to shake Sherlock by the collar. ‘I _had_ to do something!’

After this explosion of pent-up anger and frustration, his strength abated somewhat.

‘I know that you can’t understand but … Greg was my only friend … after,’ he added weakly.

Having gotten the intense anger out of his system, John was left with the bitter sadness that had driven him to Mycroft in the first place. He slowly let go of Sherlock’s collar; his fingers had almost cramped up around it. Thinking the fight to be over, he was taken completely unaware when Sherlock slammed him back into the door, hard enough to send stabs of pain from his shoulder blades.

Before he’d even begun to get his bearings, he was thrown off his feet as Sherlock jumped at him and they landed hard on the tiles. _Apparently I haven’t been the only one dealing with pent-up anger,_ John thought, panicking. And what anger it was! As he tried to move, Sherlock pinned him against the cold ground.

‘Mycroft is a duplicitous bastard who will do anything to improve his own position,’ Sherlock growled. ‘And we both know exactly how far he’s prepared to go! I can’t … not again …’

He was panting heavily and John got the impression he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But the fact that this was Sherlock Holmes made such a thing highly improbable, didn’t it? John wasn’t entirely convinced of that anymore when the detective slowly leaned down and rested his forehead on John’s, as if he was unable to support the weight of his head any longer. With his eyes closed, regular but laboured breathing brushing John’s face, he seemed as if he were trying to formulate words but couldn’t.

John stopped struggling. Something was not right. Sherlock looked – tormented, clutching John’s collar not as an attack, but in a desperate attempt to hold on. Softly, John placed his fingers around the clenched fists.

‘It’s okay, I …’ his voice died when Sherlock opened his eyes and pulled back a little. He gazed down at him as if he had come to realise something important, but John couldn’t decipher the meaning of that look. It wasn’t marked by the previous fury, though, and when the hands clutched his collar more firmly, John wasn’t alarmed.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sherlock whispered and closed his eyes. ‘A friend, yes ...’

He breathed in and bridged the gap between their foreheads again. At a loss about what to do, John allowed the contact to continue for as long as Sherlock needed it, but when Sherlock suddenly leaned in even closer, inclining his head. _What is he –?_ flashed through John’s mind just as the slightest brush of Sherlock’s lips against his did something to John’s senses that he couldn’t process. Overloaded with warring feelings, John was only peripherally aware of his fingers starting to fumble for Sherlock’s coat.

‘Oh God, John, I …’

What the …? John’s eyes snapped open and he briefly wondered when he had closed them at all. Yet this thought was immediately overruled by the sheer and utter panic he saw – only for a fraction of a second – before Sherlock regained control of himself, erasing every trace of emotion. Hastily, the other man got up and stumbled backwards.

‘I’m sorry, John, I don’t know what … what came over me.’ He was gesticulating wildly as he seemed to struggle to get his breathing under control. ‘I think … I’d better leave.’

 _You wouldn’t,_ John thought, but the back of that coat was already disappearing rapidly down the street. Well, clearly he would.

Remaining where he was, John sat up a little and leaned the back of his head against the doorway, trying to straighten the jumble of his mind. That episode had been confusing at best, he thought. If he didn’t know it better he’d say Sherlock had almost kissed him.

‘Sure, John,’ he addressed his body, which had reacted to the close proximity in ways that were making it impossible to get up. Forced to wait until he was presentable enough, John cleared out the emotional burdens that threatened to cloud his judgement and instead focused on the task at hand.

Even when taking Sherlock’s disapproval into account, Mycroft was still his most promising source. That he had betrayed his brother was far too powerful a button not to be pushed when trying to get information from him, John decided. Perhaps it had also been the fact that he placed himself in the entrance of St Pancras, shouting at his phone when he made his random call to demand Mycroft’s attention, but this time he got the address of an office building with windows – and a mahogany desk, behind which Mycroft was squirming when John threatened him with the exposure of each and every government scheme he had ever been involved in. A wonderfully gratifying sight, John had to admit, and productive as well. Satisfied, he had left the office.

Now he had a name of a Franco-Austrian diplomat to start with, plus a possible connection to an international organisation that was still a mystery to the Secret Service. Most importantly, he had an address in Paris.

Already on his way home, John cashed in all of his saved up vacation days at work, changed the money in his bank account into euros and booked a train ticket. Only three hours later, he was settling in his seat in the train, his mind slowly catching up with recent events. Sluggishly, it tried to bring things into line, but the memory closest to what was going on were all the taxi rides he’d taken with Sherlock. It was the moment of anticipation before they’d get to a crime scene or a confrontation with a criminal, full of subtle excitement, adrenalin sharpening his senses and heightening his attention. One thing was missing though.

John sighed and the businessman next to him briefly looked up from his laptop. _Sherlock isn’t here,_ John confirmed to himself. No sympathetic silence that had always had such a calming effect, no dry humour or inside jokes.

He couldn’t really pin down the sentiment disheartening him to an even greater degree than usual, and he quickly gave up trying to find a fitting formula. Just one notion came bubbling to the surface time and time again, and sitting on the train, in the darkness of the Channel Tunnel, he would have done anything to have Sherlock in the seat next to him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much, Batik, for helping me part with bad grammar and cheesy metaphors.


	5. The city

When John got off the train, he was caught up in the crowd of people elbowing their way along the platform. He tried to keep up, but he couldn’t manage the same inconsideration as a backpacker who brutally barged into him, almost sending him crashing into a destination board.

‘Idiot,’ he muttered at the casually dressed youth wearing a baseball cap and pilot sunglasses, hoping that he hadn’t heard. _It must be the influence of the continent that makes me forget my manners,_ John thought.

The crowd dispersed easily at the end of the platform and John stopped in the cover of a large pillar in the main hall. He thought he’d felt his phone vibrating, and after he fished it out of his pocket, his suspicion was confirmed: one missed text message.

 _Go back to London. Now! SH,_ he read and immediately looked around _._

How could Sherlock possibly know? Annoyed, he typed in an answer.

_Where are you?_

A short pause and the mobile vibrated again.

_Take the next train to London! SH_

_Such a …!_ John took out his anger on the phone and needed the double amount of time to finish his text.

_Are you here? Will not go back._

The answer came so quickly that John suspected that it had been typed before John’s text had been delivered.

_Where do you live? SH_

John stopped. Why should he tell him? Sherlock would find out anyway, he decided and typed.

_La Fortune, Marais_

_That ‘SH’ rubbish,_ John thought, irritated. There was only one person sending him presumptuous texts ordering him around like this. Even Mycroft added a ‘please’. John pocketed his now silent phone, shouldered his bag and left the Gare du Nord to head for the metro. Using public transport to the hotel seemed like the most sensible thing to do, not everyone was Sherlock Holmes and could make every bloody trip by taxi. John cursed in his head.

The hotel was exactly how he remembered it from his stay there during a conference. That this conference had, in fact, been ten years ago was not a compliment to the state of the building, though the owners had tried to fix the worst signs of deterioration. His room was long and narrow, with a very worn carpet, a tiny balcony and a bathroom so small that he could barely turn around in it.

Yet none of this mattered. It would serve its purpose and the hotel was in a part of the city centre where John knew his way around.

Completely knackered, he just let his bag drop on the floor and only managed to get out of his shoes and trousers before he lay down on the bed. Before he could cover himself properly, he felt heavy tiredness already pulling him towards sleep.

When he opened his eyes again, night had fallen. Cold and stiff, one of his legs dangling over the edge of the bed, he could feel a crick in his neck coming on. For a few seconds he thought this general discomfort had woken him, but he soon noticed an incessant scraping sound coming from the balcony.

Still a bit hazy from sleep, he shuffled to the door, where he was greeted by a sight that effectively shook him wide awake. Standing on his tiny balcony was the rude backpacker from the station, although from this angle, he could clearly tell it was Sherlock. John grinned and opened the door, trying to stifle a yawn.

‘If you had slept any heavier, I would have been forced to pick the lock. I’ve been out here for at least five minutes!’ Sherlock edged through the open door.

‘You must forgive me, your Highness, I didn’t recognize you in your street clothes,’ John remarked, biting back a laugh.

Sherlock frowned, a patronising sneer forming on his face.

‘In contrast to you I’m aware of the fact that this mission is of a dangerous nature. You shouldn’t underestimate the fatal risks of an unprofessional approach. That’s also the reason why I’m against involving … civilians. They –’

John stopped him with a tired wave of his hand.

‘Spare me the litany, will you? It’s crystal clear, the great consulting detective is the only one able to … bloody hell, did you dye your hair?’

‘Otherwise I wouldn’t pass as someone in his mid-twenties, would I? But that is not the point, John!’ Sherlock grumbled and closed the balcony door.

When Sherlock began to stare him down in his usual way, John couldn’t help but wonder what had happened during his absence. The penetrating look, the tense posture, everything was there, yet nothing really matched.

‘You have to leave immediately.’

There was a definite difference in the way Sherlock was ordering him, and John couldn’t shake the feeling that the constant repetition was slowly turning the demand into a plea. John saw Sherlock breathe in deeply, and when he reached out to grip John’s shoulders, it rather felt as if he were being pulled closer than kept at a distance.

‘It isn’t safe here! These people are –’

‘I don’t care, do you hear me?’ John interrupted him and shook the hands off. ‘It doesn’t matter what syndicate has planned what scheme, or what politician is behind it, pulling the strings!’ he shouted. ’This is about Greg! I owe this to him!’

‘John, listen to yourself!’ Sherlock was now matching his volume. ‘You cannot possibly be serious! Where’s that supposed –’

‘Taisez-vous!’ suddenly sounded from the neighbouring room, accompanied by furious knocking on the wall. John saw his own guilty expression mirrored on Sherlock’s face, just like during the afternoon when Mrs Hudson refused to bring them tea after yet another explosion in the flat.

‘This is the last time I’m telling you,’ he whispered, grabbing hold of Sherlock’s sweater when the other man moved to turn away. ‘I’m not going back. Is that clear? I’ll do everything I can to find Greg or at least make the lives of some of those bastards really miserable. Either you and I work together – which the episode with the car proved useful – or we are just going to be stumbling blocks for each other.’

John knew the condescending look Sherlock directed at people he found lacking or in his way. And because he knew it so well, John could tell he was not being subjected to that look – even though he had expected it. Sherlock wasn’t his supercilious self at all. Instead, he appeared tired.

‘I agree.’

Before John could react to the unexpected admission, Sherlock regained a bit of control.

‘If you refuse to return to London, that is,’ he added gruffly. ‘But there are restrictions. You’ll stick to my instructions, you won’t be in direct contact with those people and, above all, we won’t be seen together, understood?’

John bristled at the rhetorical question. He was used to being the sidekick, but it still stung, and his ridiculous position became even more obvious to him when he realised that he was just in boxers and a T-shirt. His hand didn’t want to let go of Sherlock’s sweater, though. To John’s surprise, Sherlock also didn’t move.

‘May I take a shower?’

His voice was so quiet that John wouldn’t have heard it had they not been standing in such close proximity. Immediately, John released the sweater.

‘Yes ... yes, of course,’ he stuttered. ‘But –?’

‘I mustn’t attract attention, so I’ve arranged alternative accommodation,’ Sherlock explained. ‘My things are stored in an abandoned building, and sleep, well, if anyone should know about me and sleep ...’ John reflected the small smile that was quirked at him, briefly revelling in the long-lost feeling of mutual understanding. ‘But it means I have to forgo the basic amenities,’ Sherlock finished.

Grinning, John pointed in the direction of the bathroom door.

‘Suit yourself. You’ll find towels on the rack.’

Sherlock disappeared. After putting on his trousers, John began unpacking. He felt as if he had just begun the process in earnest – despite how lightly he had packed – when the sound of the running water in the bathroom stopped.

‘Could you lend me a clean T-shirt?’ Sherlock shouted through the door, and John dug into his bag. The same automatic response that made him open the balcony door to Sherlock made him open the bathroom door without a second thought. It was just Sherlock’s voice shaking him awake again.

‘Don’t ...!’

John froze in the doorway of the small room. Everything in him screamed to take a step back and stop invading the man’s privacy, but John simply couldn’t believe what he saw, and he unabashedly stared at the display before him.

What had made Sherlock’s return so unbelievable was the fact that he seemed so unchanged, especially now that he was rid of the grey streaks. The two years, which John felt had aged him decades – the lines around his mouth more pronounced and his hair shining more with grey – seemed to have done nothing to Sherlock. Every time John saw him, it felt like a mockery of his own mortality. Someone as clever as Sherlock couldn’t possibly do something as mundane as aging.

But he had been mistaken, remarkably so. Rooted to the spot, he could see exactly what those two years had done to his friend. Sherlock’s chest was covered with scars of different sizes. Some were old and pale; some were fresh and aggressively red. Some were small but scattered over a wide area, others, like the one across his stomach, were comparably superficial and confined to a narrow space, even if they were technically bigger.

What made John’s breath hitch, though, was the view he caught before Sherlock turned around. A line about the width of a finger ran on a diagonal from Sherlock’s shoulder to the middle of his back. It stopped just an inch from his spine and John’s medical mind immediately catalogued the muscles that must have been affected.

Feeling his shoulders tense to breaking point, John gaped open-mouthed at the man standing in front of him in threadbare jeans. Aghast, he couldn’t find his voice – until Sherlock’s sneer became so pronounced that John sensed instinctive anger bubbling up.

‘What did you do?’ he asked incredulously.

The detective’s face closed off completely.

‘What was necessary.’

It must have been the faint hint of distress behind this remark that woke up the doctor in John, and he involuntarily took another step, reaching out for Sherlock. Flinching away from the touch, Sherlock back up against the sink.

‘God, this is … I’m a doctor. Let me see!’

Sherlock made a grab for his old, soiled shirt, but John snatched it from his hands.

‘You’re going to let me have a look,’ he demanded with what he hoped was his best doctor voice. ‘And then you can put on as much clothing as you like. I want to know how deep the scars are, how the scar tissue has developed and what complications and long-term damages you might expect. I want to know all this now, without any discussion and no dubious argument.’

Reluctantly, Sherlock regarded John with a mixture of annoyance and resignation.

‘No lights.’ Parallel to that statement, the light over the mirror was switched off and Sherlock brushed past him to leave the room. When John turned around, the other man was already sitting on the bed, pale and statuesque, only faintly illuminated by the glow of the street lamps.

‘But I need _some_ light to make an examination,’ John tried to negotiate. ‘Otherwise, I won’t be able to –’

‘No light.’

His tone was so final that John gave up without further discussion. He would have to rely on his sense of touch, however unsatisfactory the result might be from a medical point of view. Pulling up a chair, he sat down facing Sherlock, unsure how to begin. A quick rub of his hands showed they were not cold, yet when John started with Sherlock’s upper arms, carefully running his fingers along his shoulders, the residual warmth of his shower radiated off of Sherlock’s skin to produce a stark contrast.

Everything felt smooth on the right. On the left, John found a distinctive pattern with pronounced edges. He didn’t have to see this to recognise it.

‘Grazing shot?’

Sherlock nodded, turning his head away from the weak light of the street. Not able to see Sherlock’s face, John concentrated even more on the faintly illuminated skin under his hands. Apart from the wound, it was as soft as he had always imagined it to be – not that he had ever thought about touching it, he corrected himself inwardly. Still, a small, but characteristically round depression on the left pectoral caught John’s attention; without it, he would have continued simply touching the skin that attracted his hands almost magnetically.

However, he now tested his discovery, pressed a little, used his hand to measure the chest and froze.

‘How deep?’

‘Not very; even you should be able to deduce that. Otherwise I would not be sitting here.’

‘Of course,’ John murmured, but couldn’t let go of the little injury just yet. _Half an inch more ..._

He moved on slowly. At first it didn’t seem like there was anything more to find and, had he not seen Sherlock in the light earlier, he wouldn’t have known what to feel for. As his hand carefully glided over Sherlock’s chest, though, he sensed the many tiny scars that covered his entire torso in an erratic pattern.

‘How did you –?’

‘A fall that I should have anticipated. A preventable mistake.’

‘But no one falls on their chest like that,’ John protested. ‘And, if so, the injuries would have been much worse.’

‘If the fall isn’t from that high and your hands are bound behind your back, this is well within the range of possibilities.’

John paused. What the hell had happened during those years? And how could someone come back from the dead, pretend he was unharmed, and take up his life again? Just like that? After two years of … what?

‘Don’t ask.’ It was an order as final as the refusal to switch on the light.

With some effort, John interrupted his train of thought and began feeling Sherlock’s solar plexus, which answered his touch with goosebumps. Unable to resist, he went over it again and caused a barely perceptible shiver. Then the journey was over – a line stretching across the entire stomach made John’s hands catch.

‘Which muscles were involved?’

‘Not many, but enough.’

Lost in thought, John traced along the scar, back and forth; only the slight shudder and irregular breathing of his patient brought him back to reality.

‘It must have been incredibly painful. Why didn’t you have it stitched?’

No reaction, as if this was self-evident. Sighing, John got up and moved behind Sherlock. He knelt on the bed and searched where he remembered the large, fresh scar to be. It mercilessly crossed the flesh, the skin thin and tender, as if someone had tried to patch it up with rice paper. Here, the muscles had surely been damaged and the healing process must have been prolonged dramatically because of it. Like the other injuries, this one had also been treated poorly, the damage barely contained.

‘What was it?’

The disinterested answer could not belie the memory of pain that resonated in Sherlock’s voice.

‘A machete. Quite unimaginative.’

‘Who the hell attacks someone with a …? My God, how did you survive?’

Losing some of its tension, the back before him curled in a little and the voice that had always so ruthlessly proclaimed inconvenient truths was nearly devoid of sound.

‘I didn’t have a choice.’

Desperation and fear held no significance for Sherlock, John had always thought. But the last sentence was so full of both that John did what came instinctively to him after a fight with Harry or when he tried to console one of his girlfriends. His arms curled around Sherlock’s upper body and he held him tight. The warmth was not as striking as before, but it still reminded him of the fact that Sherlock was alive after all – going by the story printed on his skin, that fact seemed more implausible than ever.

To John’s even greater surprise, Sherlock leaned back a little, relaxing into the embrace. John sat on his heels to support the weight pressing against him, and between flexed knees, that long back against his chest, his head at the crook of John’s neck, Sherlock fit like the past piece of a puzzle.

Involuntarily, John buried his nose in Sherlock’s hair, letting the familiar scent fill his lungs, and his hand moved over his chest. Registering Sherlock’s elevated heart rate, John let his hand lightly trail over the pectoral to the deep scar and, like before, he was overcome with the horrible, devastating feeling the evidence of the small wound produced. He squeezed his eyes shut. How had Sherlock lived through this?

‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered and heard Sherlock’s pronounced breathing, his body sinking into John’s embrace a little more.

‘Don’t be. The scars always remind me of why I had to do it.’

The words were barely out of Sherlock’s mouth when something changed about his posture. Abruptly he jumped up, freeing himself from the embrace. Still processing the sudden chill on his chest, John watched Sherlock dressing.

‘We have to find out more about Hoffner. I suggest we begin with his house.’ Sherlock switched on the light and looked at his watch before he started pacing the room. Stopping in front of the jacket on the clothes hook by the door, he eyed it critically before grabbing the half-empty bag to rummage around in it.

‘Pullovers. Of course. What was I thinking?’ he mumbled. Sherlock shot an impatient look at John, who was still kneeling on the bed. ‘Do you at least have a hat?’

John gave him a small smile. Of course he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much, Batik, for squeezing some betaing in the Christmas madness.


	6. The house

Sherlock seemed to have forgotten all about him, pulling out a mobile and punching in a number as John began his search. Listening to him with half an ear, John only caught some words of the muffled conversation, despite having taken French in school. He couldn’t even begin to piece together what Sherlock was talking about.

Finally, he found the hat at the bottom of his bag and waved it in silent triumph to attract Sherlock’s attention before putting it on. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he frowned. It wasn’t a suave disguise that would help him blend in as he traipsed around Paris. He looked more like an aged hiker who had lost his way.

Sherlock disconnected the phone call at last.

‘We’ll meet at the corner, next to the boulangerie,’ he said, not bothering to glance John’s way before he stepped out on the balcony and vanished over the edge of the railing.

Sighing, John put on his jacket to leave the hotel the conventional way. Looking back and forth down the empty street, he searched for some sign of the detective, but only when a forceful hand grabbed his arm and pulled him into an entrance did he realize where Sherlock had been hiding.

‘God, John, you have the observation skills of a mole and …’ Sherlock muttered as he skeptically eyed him from head to toe. ‘No, this won’t do at all.’

He grabbed for John with both hands, pulled down the zipper and yanked the jacket off in one go, causing John to stumble backwards.

‘What the hell is your problem with my clothes? Can’t I –’

A stern look shut John up.

‘Here, take my hoodie and the baseball cap,’ Sherlock said. peeling them off. ‘There’s a pair of glasses in the pocket.’

John pulled the sweater over his head and fumbled for the glasses. He hesitated before putting them on. Each on its own, the clothes were rather ordinary; put together, he would surely look ridiculous – the victim of a midlife crisis, desperately trying look young and ‘hip’ but failing miserably. And Sherlock? Nothing looked bad on someone with a frame as thin and angular as his, not even an army jacket with rolled-up sleeves and a tweed cap on his head, John thought after a sideways glance.

A taxi pulled up to the kerb and they got in. Here, in the confined space of the car, John hoped to get an answer to the most pressing question of their nightly quest.

‘How do you know about Hoffner?’ he whispered, throwing the taxi driver a suspicious glance.

Sherlock continued staring straight ahead, seemingly debating with himself how much he should disclose. ‘The surveillance cameras of the station,’ he hissed at last.

‘And …?’ John pressed on.

Sherlock shifted and turned his head so far that he was almost looking out the rear window before he started whispering in John’s ear. ‘Then, a contact at the police established a connection to the Austrian embassy. One of the men was a former employee. Another contact, a less respectable one, informed me that there was still a connection between this former employee and a current member of the staff. While you hardly need to explain who _your_ source of information was, I do hope that you made him sweat like a rat in a forest fire.’ The warm breath on John’s ear disappeared. ‘We’ve arrived.’

John paid, stumbled out of the taxi and ran down the pavement because, after a headstart, Sherlock had already reached the next street corner. Peeking around it, he didn’t acknowledge John when he arrived.

‘Are you ready?’ John heard Sherlock’s voice, but the man didn’t even turn around.

‘For what?’

Sherlock stretched out his arm as a reply, and John automatically took the hand that beckoned him.

If that preamble hadn’t been bewildering enough, what followed was one of those metamorphoses that had always left John awestruck. After pulling him around the corner, Sherlock started speaking rapid French, and John only caught some phrases dealing with restaurants and clubbing. All the while, Sherlock was laughing as if John was responding to him in hilariously witty ways.

Briefly they walked like that, hand in hand, and John’s befuddled mind made a seamless connection to their intimate contact in the hotel room.

 _Get a grip!_ he reprimanded himself before, suddenly, he was manoeuvred into the gap between two houses and pressed up against the wall.

‘Is there someone ...?’ he started, falling silent when Sherlock inched even closer.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ John hissed. It felt suspiciously as if the man wanted to make out then and there. _Which he didn’t, did he?_ His higher brain functions effectively cancelled out by a slightly too intense rubbing together of their thighs and crotches, John clutched Sherlock’s hand even harder in a desperate attempt to stabilise himself.

‘It’s called a disguise,’ Sherlock whispered, chuckling quietly. ‘But let’s have another try.’

Gone was the addictive warmth as the hand pulled him away from the wall. Stumbling along rather awkwardly, John tried to process what Sherlock had told him, which turned out to be a hard task as Sherlock bent down to him to resume the fake conversation. His mouth breathed French gibberish in John’s ear, activating a nervous response of each tiny hair the air brushed past.

 _God, this had better be over soon,_ John wished fervently.

A massive wooden door came into view and the detective laughed loudly. Almost simultaneously, John was pushed backward into the wood, one of Sherlock’s hands encircling his waist before he collided with the hard surface. John gasped for air, struggling as his firm press against the door prevented him from breathing properly.

‘A little warning next time?’ he panted, feeling Sherlock’s other hand starting to gently comb through his hair.

‘You’ll have to learn to think on your feet,’ Sherlock growled.

The hand in his hair pushed lightly to incline his head, and John first thought it might have been by accident, but the hot breath he felt on his neck afterwards didn’t leave much to the imagination. Slowly but surely the amount of sensory information became too much to deal with.

‘Bloody … hell,’ he whispered, trying to keep his voice down, ‘what’s that supposed to –?’

‘Improvise.’

 _He’s certainly going for authenticity,_ John thought, when warm lips made contact with his skin. Suddenly he found it hard to stay up right, even though he was being squeezed against the door. He was trying to find somewhere to place his feet, to steady himself, but he was distracted by the sensation of lips and teeth touching the lobe of his ear, a mouth then trailing down his throat with soft kisses. He felt sharp teeth lightly biting his neck, only to be replaced by the tip of a tongue that soothed the negligible damage.

 _Too much!_ John shouted inwardly, even though his body seemed to be of a different opinion. It instinctively searched for ways to increase their contact even more, and his hands sent bewildering signals when they clutched the fabric of what had been his own jacket.

‘Move toward the wall next to the door. I need to get a better view.’

Slightly dazed, John barely realised that Sherlock had relaxed his posture. Where was he …? Piecing together this new information, John finally came to the conclusion that he was supposed to take the lead in moving them to their destination.

_Concentrate. Spin Sherlock around until he lands on the wall. Shut down all senses and ignore the urge to reach for something other than his nape._

John went through the motions, his iron will faltering more and more with every second that Sherlock’s body clung to his. His finger were already threading their way through the short curls at the back of Sherlock’s head and, God, with Sherlock leaning against the wall, the difference in their height wasn’t so pronounced anymore. If he moved just a tiny bit … suddenly, one of Sherlock’s fake laughs sounded through the night.

‘Mais tu es fou! Vite, à la maison!’

John’s hand was clutched and Sherlock vigorously pulled him along again. They resumed their path from before, marching around the next street corner, where Sherlock stopped abruptly.

‘It’s not going to be easy … not easy,’ he muttered to himself. ‘The security lock makes a simple break-in impossible and most likely there’s an alarm system. Interesting. And those people are much too clever to fall for some simple disguise. No, that wouldn’t work.’

Trying to come to terms with the sudden change in dynamics, John listened to the deductions, his heartbeat only slowing gradually.

‘Maybe we could –’ he began, but Sherlock leaned forward to peek around the corner again.

‘John, I don’t need you anymore,’ he said. ‘Go back to the hotel and get some sleep. You’ll hear from me soon.’

John suspected he had lost himself in thought or was watching the house intently, because Sherlock didn’t deign to give him another look. Hoping for another reaction to follow eventually, John waited for a moment, inwardly imploring Sherlock to stop acting as if he didn’t exist at all.

_Again._

When nothing happened and mild disappointment gradually gave way to distinct anger, John left wordlessly. He trudged through the city, barely able to walk straight, his thoughts a whirling mess. Tiredness made it impossible to distance himself from the dejection he felt, despite several attempts, and only because a sympathetic taxi driver stopped by him did John manage to return to the hotel eventually.

Still feeling dazed, John collapsed on the bed and fell asleep immediately.

***

_Baker Street._

He was home.

Dust, the lingering smell of tobacco, and _Sherlock_ – a deep contentedness spread through John, soothing his mind to a degree that he could no longer tell if he was dreaming or awake. His eyes covered by the crook of his arm, John blinked against the fabric of his clothes, but although the strange feel of his pullover irritated him at first, it was nothing in contrast to the characteristic smell that still surrounded him. He would say that it had become even more pronounced when he allowed wakefulness to order his thoughts – until his mind caught up with reality at last.

It was the sweater. Moving his arm away from his face made the scent disappear immediately.

 _God, John, you’re pathetic,_ he groaned inwardly and rolled onto his belly. The morning wood pressing into the mattress made that realisation even worse and rendered sleep impossible, forcing John out of bed when he would have preferred to forget about his delusions with another snatch of sleep. Groggily, he shuffled into the bathroom – maybe it would help to relieve himself and have a shower.

As the water ran down his body at last, the tiredness persisted as much as the hard-on. John leaned on the tiles and automatically closed a hand around his penis, shutting his eyes to avoid the light. The jet of the shower tickled his shoulders, warm steam surrounding him and lulling him into a comfortable state of relaxation. Allowing his mind to wander ...

‘Shit!’ he cursed, letting go of his erection. He hadn’t seriously been thinking about Sherlock’s mouth on his throat, had he?

 _It must be the water._ Gritting his teeth, he gave in to the need to touch himself again, mentally fighting the novel scenarios in his imagination – but to no avail. They overpowered every defence he tried to set up, wherever he steered his thoughts, he always ended up with the same impressions.

Sherlock fixing him with that look, pressing him against the door. Sherlock’s lips on his throat. That almost kiss …

This last memory made John climax with such force that he had to lean on the tap for a while afterwards to regain control of his body.

‘Bloody hell,’ he cursed, panting for breath. ‘I’m such a …’

It had been camouflage, damn it! Sherlock had occupied himself with John’s throat to have a look at the lock behind their backs, the angle of his head just right to detect possible cameras and other security measures on the wall. Sherlock had told him afterwards. Hell, he’d even told him _before_ it happened! What kind of sexually frustrated simpleton was he that he couldn’t deal with being part of such a charade?

 _I should have worked less and dated more,_ John told himself. If Sherlock’s return had unleashed pent-up lust amassed during an overlong mourning, there was still no reason to take it out on the man.

No matter how much he reflected on it as he dressed and finished getting ready for his day, John wasn’t able to shake his annoyance with the whole episode. He tried to brighten his spirits with the help of some pastry from the bakery, but even having a late breakfast in the mild April sun couldn’t improve his bad temper.

Unsurprisingly, when Sherlock entered the room around noon, he didn’t seem to notice John’s low spirits in the least. Taking a deep breath, John stepped over the threshold of the balcony and watched Sherlock fall on the bed, assuming his typical pose.

‘You’ve obviously found something. What?’ John snapped.

On a scale of ten for smug grins, Sherlock’s would’ve been an eleven.

‘It was so easy.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Pity, actually. Ah, well. First of all my observation was successful. Around ten, a woman left the house and drove to a well-known café to have breakfast with a friend. It immediately became clear to me that she would be my way into Hoffner’s flat, I mean she had _neglected wife_ written all over her – a lot of money but no attention from her husband. And while they had breakfast, I bought some new clothes nearby and waited for my chance.’

Only then did John realise that Sherlock was not wearing the army jacket anymore but a casual combination of jeans and a closely fitted white shirt. His hair looked like someone had spent a lot of time making it look unkempt, a sort of immaculate bedhead, and the detective would have had no problem identifying the scent of cologne and hair products that was spreading in the room, deducing ingredients and brands.

‘After breakfast I saw my chance when Hoffner’s wife went shopping – what else? – and I followed her,” he said derisively. ‘People are so predictable, so … naïve. Even when she was sitting there with her friend, I could deduce at least seven ways to completely shatter her defenses. In the end, I only needed two. Two, John! She was convinced we were soul mates. Her term, not mine …’

‘Of course. And then?’

‘We’ll meet this afternoon at ‘La Maison’ which hosts something like a thé dansant. She found it, and I quote, “exquisitely old-fashioned” of me to invite her there. No surprise.’

‘Is there a reason?’

John knew this question was completely unnecessary in Sherlock’s world but he withstood the glare.

‘You’ll be there, too. I’ll give you the key or any other device to get into the house. Then you’ll meet an acquaintance of mine in the south of the city who’ll make duplicates. Afterwards you bring everything back to “La Maison”.’

‘Okay, sounds like a plan.’

Sherlock frowned.

‘That _is_ a plan. In the meantime, you can make yourself useful.’ John’s questioning look was only answered by a wave to come nearer. When he had approached to an arm’s length away, Sherlock handed him his phone.

‘Ginette, that’s her name, seems to expect me to send her some kind of amorous text messages. Not exactly my area, but I remember that you have some experience in this.’

‘Are you kidding me?’ John snorted and pushed the phone away from him on the table. The last thing he wanted to do was to write flirty texts from Sherlock to this woman. Especially after … No, he forced the thoughts out of his head and decided to focus on the anger instead. ‘Do it yourself; she’s your girlfriend.’

‘But we both know you’re the expert, don’t we? I’ve read your e-mails, John,’ Sherlock said with a knowing smirk.

‘That’s really not something you should bring up if you want me to help you.’ John folded his arms to show exactly how unlikely it was for him to pick up that phone and start typing.

Sherlock reached for the phone and sat down opposite John at the table, looking intently at the screen.

‘You know, this pig-headed attitude of yours could come to jeopardise the entire case.’ He didn’t even look up from the phone.

‘How hard can it be?’ John asked.

The gloriously triumphant smile on Sherlock’s lips was what made him realise that he’d caved before he even realised it himself.

‘It’s very hard,’ Sherlock said.

‘There has to be something about her you can work with. Pretty eyes usually works.’

‘No, she has boring eyes.’

‘How can eyes be boring?’

‘Most of them are. And boring is ugly.’

‘What about funny? They usually prefer that to pretty, especially if they _are_ pretty. Otherwise it’s the other way around.’

‘But she’s _not_ funny.’

‘Well, write that then.’

To his horror, John saw that Sherlock actually started typing.

‘You’re not writing that she’s not funny, are you?’

Sherlock just grinned.

‘Give me that!’ snapped John and grabbed the phone from his hands, scrolling up the screen to delete the mess, hoping intently that he hadn’t managed to send it yet.

However, he saw pretty quickly that damage control was unnecessary.

_We’ve met, we’ve talked, but soon we’ll touch._

He’d been bluffing all along.

‘Well, I …’ John started, but then stopped. Something felt wrong, as if reading a seductive text written by Sherlock breached his privacy even more than barging into the bathroom when he was half naked. John couldn’t pin it down exactly, it was just ... wrong. ‘Erm, … not bad,’ he continued, trying to sound as detached and disinterested as he could muster.

When he looked up and met Sherlock’s eyes, though, John was convinced that he hadn’t succeeded in his act. The moment was over so quickly that he was pretty much sure it hadn’t taken place at all, because next thing he knew, he was looking at an empty chair and could hear the sound of the door slamming shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (insert heap of chocolates here) --> my beta Batik


	7. The key

_1600, La Maison, formal dress. SH_

The text John received two hours after Sherlock had disappeared didn’t reflect any of the queasy feelings their last encounter had left him with, so he decided to let it drop. He must have imagined all of it.

Fortunately, he had packed his dark brown suit, which hopefully would also hide the creases in his shirt. Tie? Why not, he could take it off, if necessary. But what someone like Sherlock Holmes meant by ‘formal dress’ was beyond him. He just hoped it didn’t mean tail coat and bow tie.

He had to look somewhat presentable, because a taxi pulled over immediately once he was outside the hotel. After a short drive, he walked into the courtyard of an old building that had surely housed similar entertainment a hundred years ago. A couple opened an unobtrusive door and he followed them inside the house and through a thick curtain.

‘Bonjour, monsieur.’

The friendly but reserved waiter guided him down a hallway that ended in an impressively large room.

The entrance to it was a little elevated and, in front of John, a couple of stairs went down to the lower seating area, where half-round booths framed a dance floor. There also were tables on his level, but they were lined up along a squiggly iron balustrade. Straining his eyes, he searched for Sherlock and found him sitting in the second row next to the dance floor.

John signalled the waiter that he would prefer a table along the rail and went towards the one that promised the best view of Sherlock’s booth. After ordering a glass of wine and relaxing in the comfortable plush chair, John scanned his surroundings.

A little band was playing a waltz to which three brave couples were already shuffling over the parquet. The atmosphere was surprisingly easy-going and John could hear Sherlock’s fake laughter, which sporadically interrupted the conversation he was having with the woman opposite him. John craned his neck but couldn’t see much of her from his perspective until she moved around the table to sit next to Sherlock.

John gasped. Hoffner obviously had a good taste in women. The pale blonde beauty was every stereotypical male fantasy made flesh and, on top of all that, the dress she was wearing revealed more of her cleavage than it covered.

And _of course_ she could barely keep her hands off Sherlock.

John clenched his teeth. As someone for whom beauties like Mrs Hoffner were easily attainable, modest conquests like John’s hadn’t meant anything. Why else would Sherlock have been so careless with John’s relationships, sabotaging them whenever possible?

He was so absorbed in his inner ramblings that he nearly had not felt his phone vibrate.

_Toilet, now. SH_

John sniggered, relieved to have his mind taken off his unpleasant memories. He would definitely save that message.

He paid and took his jacket. On his way in, he had seen the signs pointing toward the toilets, but when he entered the room with the elaborate brass ‘H’, he found it empty. To avoid suspicion, he started washing his hands.

‘Shh!’

John jumped and looked up. The mirror reflected an impatient Sherlock peeking through the crack of one of the cubicles’ doors.

‘Hurry, if you please!’ he hissed and John edged through the door to be welcomed by the sight of Sherlock searching for something in a lady’s handbag.

‘Hold this.’ The bag was thrust against John’s chest and he clutched it instinctively. Sherlock opened the wallet he had found inside to check it and John tried to get a look as well.

 _What the heck do they put in men’s colognes these days?_ crossed John’s mind. He sniffed, hoping he was being inconspicuous. Musk, maybe sandalwood.

On the verge of asking Sherlock, John managed to stop himself before anything slipped out. For fuck’s sake, he was in a men’s toilet, sniffing at his friend!

Trying to make his brain process the information his eyes were sending, John started to breathe shallowly to reduce the amount of scent he inhaled. But damn, that stuff was good, and whatever it was, it stirred a pleasant warmth in him.

Leaning a little more toward the dark blue suit that radiated what his mind immediately categorised as masculinity and seduction, John blocked everything else and inhaled again.

‘John, I’m talking to you,’ Sherlock rumbled.

Surprised, John blinked, focusing his eyes again. A small bunch of keys was dangling in front of his nose and a card and a slip of paper were pressed into his hand.

‘This is the address, please take a taxi and hurry.’

Then Sherlock was gone. Still a little dazed, John left the cubicle and nearly collided with another man, but by the time he was outside the toilet, he had gathered his senses again. He aimed for the exit, risking only one last glance at the dance floor, where Sherlock was just about to extract his partner from another man’s arms. Unresisting, she glided back into Sherlock’s embrace.

John grunted. Such a git.

Every time _he_ had gone on a date, he could be sure there would be an urgent text message in the course of the evening. That is if the great detective hadn’t appeared to _personally_ spoil the fun. Tearing his eyes away from the couple, John left the club and got into a waiting taxi.

 _I do the work and he gets all the credit,_ he grumbled inwardly. Although so much had changed during Sherlock’s absence, some things would always be the same, it seemed.

Yet what had changed exactly? The ease of their living together in Baker Street was definitely gone and in its place there was something else. Something disconcerting that threw him off track but attracted him at the same time. As if one minute he felt incredibly close to Sherlock, only to feel as if they were strangers again in the next.

The ride was over before John had come to a conclusion, and after some searching the street for the address, he knocked at the door of a run-down building. He heard approximately five locks being opened before a young guy, half punk, half clochard, peeked through the crack of the door. John managed a reassuring smile before he was pulled into the house by an energetic hand.

‘Je suis Ethan. Tu es a friend de Sherlock?’ the man asked in broken English.

‘John. Mmh, yes, you could say so. I brought you this.’ He showed him the card and the key. ‘I hope you know what to do with it.’

He handed over the items and Ethan’s face lit up.

‘Ah, oui, this ‘as a magnet in it. But don’t worry, it will work out.’

He sat down at his computer and put the card into a reading device. The key was placed in a box – to be scanned, John supposed.

‘Why do you know Sherlock? You don’t look like a man who is friends with ‘im,’ Ethan asked while he was frantically typing in commands.

‘We knew each other for some time, in London. When did you meet him?’

Ethan paused.

‘Oh, that was, I think, a year ago, eh oui, a friend from Londres said to me that Sherlock, he is okay. When he was ‘ere, how do you say … take apart, yes, he take apart this guy. I don’t know why but it doesn’t matter, the guy really was an arsehole. Then Sherlock needs a passport for Russie and I make it for ‘im.’

John nodded as if he understood but in fact, he did not. Why Russia?

‘I don’t know ‘is problem, but I think he was on a thing like a vendetta, tu comprends, John?’ Ethan continued as if he had heard his thoughts. ‘ _I have to get something done_ , he always says, like the Terminator, eh.’

Ethan laughed and put on welding goggles to laser the key. A bit out of his depth, John sat down on a wobbly chair, trying to piece together the puzzle that was laid out before him. A couple of aspects now made more sense. During those two years, Sherlock had done the same things as before: catching criminals.

Then why couldn’t he tell anyone that he was alive? If he hadn’t wanted to return, it would have been understandable. Yet that obviously wasn’t the case, so why make everyone believe they’d lost him forever?

‘Voilà, and say ‘ello to Sherlock. I hope he can get off his trip, now that he ‘as a friend again.’

Ethan smiled at John and handed him the originals and an envelope with the duplicates. John pocketed them inside his jacket, shaking Ethan’s outstretched hand afterwards.

‘Thank you.’

Upon his return to La Maison, the waiter eyed him suspiciously before resorting to the stuffed frog countenance of every French garcon. Again, John chose a strategically positioned seat and even managed to order another glass of wine before his phone vibrated.

_Put originals in left pocket, get up in five seconds and go to bar. SH_

Hurriedly, he placed the items in their respective place and counted to five. Then he started in the direction of the long bar; after a few steps he was jostled by someone.

‘Pardon, monsieur,’ a well-known baritone growled. Sherlock was already on the retreat again when John cautiously felt for the keys in his pocket. They were gone. To make his little tour less conspicuous, John nevertheless went on to the bar to inquire after the spirits they were selling there. He hadn’t returned to his seat when another message came in.

_Copies into the waste-paper bin next to the sinks, in 2 min. SH_

After the next errand John sat down at his table again, determined to at least finish his glass of wine before Sherlock sent him back to the hotel. He leaned back and observed the guests, but Sherlock and his partner were nowhere to be seen.

During John’s absence, the dance floor had become crowded and the couples were manoeuvring around each other more or less elegantly, the slow foxtrot not demanding too much of their skills. Then the music faded and a new rhythm began – a tango, it seemed. When it gained pace, John saw Sherlock with the woman again. Slowly, they were moving to the front row of the dancers.

John felt his hands balling to fists. Of course he had always known that Sherlock had perfect reflexes and body control, in spite of all the sitting around and crouching over the microscope. But why could the bloody bastard dance above all?

Betraying no agitation, Sherlock guided his partner around the other couples and the woman followed his lead quite naturally. Even from a distance, John could easily interpret Mrs Hoffner’s signals and the way she clung to Sherlock: She wanted him.

_That bitch._

John froze. Okay, an overreaction, nothing else, he thought to himself. He saw the woman whisper something in Sherlock’s ear and forced himself to swallow despite the lump in his throat, but when she fluttered her damn, fake eyelashes at Sherlock, making him laugh what sounded like that first genuine laugh since he …

John’s breath caught.

_Oh, fuck._

The band started to play a blues number and John stood up to leave the building hastily. He walked back to the hotel, registering somewhere in the back of his mind that his feet were aching. But that pain was completely eclipsed by the realisation that had stamped its message everywhere on his mind.

_I envied the woman._

Long forgotten, Irene Adler’s words emerged and mocked him mercilessly, taunting him with each step he took. He couldn’t be that oblivious, could he? If he were gay, he would have found out at some point in his dating history before now, wouldn’t he?

 _You had sex with a man mere months after Sherlock’s presumed death, you pillock,_ he berated himself. And even if that hadn’t been the case – this was Sherlock, and Sherlock had always been the exception to every rule.

Arriving in his room, John took off his suit and lay down on the bed, waiting for the inevitable crisis. Studying the chipped moulding on the ceiling, he recapitulated the previous days.

He had been jealous. And turned on – God, how embarrassingly obvious he must have been! At least now it all made sense: The flirty text message that was wrong because it had been for someone else. The breathtaking sight of Sherlock in his pinstripe shirt. The scent.

 _John, I’m talking to you_. That voice and the way it pronounced his name …

John squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stem the tide of impressions that came forth. But why should he hold those images back? What use was there in ignoring something that had obviously lain dormant for some time?

John’s mind transported him to an incident when Sherlock had dictated to him the details of a case while still in the tub. The flush on Sherlock’s face and chest had left a vivid image in his mind – as had the way Sherlock had reclined his head on the rim of the tub, eyes closed and completely relaxed.

_Was that how he looked when he had sex?_

One of John’s hands automatically pushed under the waistband of his boxers and grasped his cock. Just the slightest touch opened the floodgates of his memory: Sherlock drinking tea in his pyjama bottoms and a slightly tattered T-shirt; Sherlock in nothing but that damn white sheet. Sherlock’s lips on his throat, then his teeth on his neck. How would it feel to have those firm lips close around his cock, the strong tongue playfully exploring his length?

He gasped for air and desperately tried to fight the overwhelming pull in his testicles. The thought of sinking into the warm cavern of Sherlock’s mouth, those blue-grey eyes gazing at him …

Catapulting him towards his orgasm, John’s mind provided a mosaic of gloriously filthy images that were torn to shreds by the phenomenal discharge of his pent-up lust. Still pumping his cock to prolong the delightful spasms, he felt the first warm spurts on his chest already getting cold. A little disoriented, he staggered to the bathroom and leaned on the sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

‘John Watson,’ he sighed. ‘You’re such an idiot.’ A smile stole onto his face when he remembered that Sherlock once had called him that. There had to be something to it then.

Despite his initial acceptance of his new knowledge, John passed the remaining night restlessly. Short bouts of sleep alternated with long stretches of pacing the room and, when his telephone woke him at 6 in the morning, he was barely able to hit the right button to read the message.

_Take the 9.07 train to Bollène, via Avignon. Gare de Lyon. SH_

Packing, taking the metro, buying a ticket and finding a seat – John managed everything automatically. Only when the proliferation of the Parisian banlieue faded out of view and the typically French colouring of vernally green wheat and yellow rape took over did John relax and slowly arrive at the decision he hadn’t been able to reach during the night.

In less than four hours, Sherlock and he would meet again. They would exchange information, make plans and talk about their line of action. And then he would tell Sherlock how he felt for him, no matter how much awkward silence and personal humiliation that would entail.

Because if he had learnt one thing from the past, it was that he should never leave things unsaid again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much, Batik, for finding some time for me during the Christmas madness.


	8. The village

John was greeted by a warm breeze as he got off the train. For the end of April, temperatures were exceptionally high and the sun was shining through the windows of the little station outside of Bollène. He heard the local train from Avignon depart and couldn’t suppress a sigh.

With the weather and the bits and pieces of French he heard being spoken around him, it almost was like being on holiday. Not that he really remembered the feeling – it had been years since he had gone on a short trip, let alone abroad. Greg and he had sometimes talked about …

John compressed his lips and buried the nagging fear those thoughts brought in their wake. Alongside the worries for Greg, he also tried to push away the dread of the inevitable confrontation with Sherlock, but both memories left him restless, and he was relieved when his mobile announced a message at last.

_Next to the main entrance, third door on the right. SH_

John looked around and then walked towards the cracked door that said it was for maintenance only, if he translated the sign correctly.

‘Come in already!’ Sherlock’s voice sounded from inside.

A little apprehensive, John entered the room – and could barely keep himself from bursting out laughing before he had closed the door.

‘Of all your disguises, this is by far the most ridiculous,’ he grunted at the sight of Sherlock trying to squeeze into some tightly fitting shorts – just as tightly fitting as the top he was already wearing.

A plastic bag was thrown at his feet and, horrified, John picked it up.

‘I can’t wear that!’ he protested, faced with an outfit that was just as ugly as Sherlock’s. ‘I’m 43, for goodness sake!’

The other man sized him up until John started to squirm.

‘What?’

‘It’ll do just fine.’ Sherlock smirked. ‘And we have to unpack our things and put them in here.’

He pushed two panniers towards John and started to empty his rucksack into the remaining two bags. Deliberating about what to do, John opted for the hardest task first, and that meant overcoming his natural aversion to colourful spandex. After struggling to get into the tight gear, he immediately felt like he was trapped in a sausage casing.

‘Fits perfectly,’ Sherlock remarked dryly. ‘Not surprising, though, as I chose them.’

He bent down and took a small gadget out of his bag. ‘We’ll ride via Pierrelatte to St-Remèze, and remember to always keep a distance of at least half a mile; use the walkie-talkie if you want to contact me. There’s something like a B&B in St-Remèze called ‘La Vallée’, please get a room for the two of us. And try to use fake identities whenever possible. Here’s the key for the lock.’

He handed John the walkie-talkie and a little key.

‘What do you mean by _ride_?’ John asked, bewildered. ‘And what lock?’

Sherlock could barely contain his irritation. ‘Of the blue-green racing bike left of the entrance. Please wait a couple of minutes before you leave.’

He stuffed his rucksack behind one of the shelves full of rags and detergents, grabbed his panniers and edged out of the door.

Flabbergasted, John looked at the array of baggage in front of him. The idea of Sherlock on a bicycle spurred him on to repack his things eventually, but when he stepped outside the station, Sherlock was already gone.

 _Well, it’s different from the taxis,_ John thought as he found the bike and twiddled with the fastenings of the panniers. The trip would take his mind off his wandering thoughts, and the moment he mounted the uncomfortable saddle, he got a clear idea of exactly how this was going to work out.

Especially during the last twenty of the thirty miles, thinking of Sherlock provoked the idea of killing him on the spot, if anything. Out of the corners of his eyes, John was aware of picturesque villages and hilly meadows with fields fully in bloom, but his aching buttocks eclipsed everything. As if Sherlock had known, he was nowhere to be seen when John arrived at the pension.

He dismounted his bike with a curse and then limped inside the house, where a young man reluctantly tore his eyes away from a crossword puzzle.

‘Bonjour, monsieur, comment est-ce que je peux vous aider?’

‘Do you speak English?’

‘Ah, oui.’

What had Sherlock meant when he had asked him to get a room for the two of them? If any identification was needed there was just one solution.

‘A … twin for me and my friend … Albert Brainheimer,’ he said.

‘Your … eh … passport, s’il vous plait.’

John filled in the form, fetched his panniers and went directly to his room to peel out of the spandex skin. Grateful to be back in his normal clothes, he sat down on the bed to eat the cheese baguette he had had the foresight to buy on the train.

‘Albert, what a pleasure!’ he snickered when Sherlock came in.

‘The concierge called me _Monsieur Brainheimer_.’ Sherlock frowned. ‘Should I have reminded you of the fake identities we used to go by in London?’

‘Ah, well.’ John couldn’t hide a malicious smirk. ‘Put it down to dehydration.’

Sherlock shook his head and dug into one of the panniers. When he found the clothes he had been searching for, he vanished into the bathroom.

John stared at the door and felt his heart sink. The relaxed atmosphere wasn’t genuine after all. Sherlock still didn’t trust him, shying away from him even though, in Paris, John had traced every scar and could map all of them with his eyes closed.

‘The sun will set in approximately three hours, so we should hurry,’ Sherlock shouted through the closed door. ‘Meet me at the shed next to the road leaving the village to the south-west. We’ll walk. Follow me in five minutes.’

A little later, Sherlock left the bathroom and the room like an olive-brown flash, but John needed the biggest part of the five minutes he was given to gather his senses. Finally concluding that he had to ignore Sherlock’s erratic behaviour for the time being if he ever hoped to muster up the courage to confront him, John headed for the shed.

Even though he knew Sherlock was waiting there, John had nearly missed him; with his dark green jacket and brown trousers, Sherlock had almost become a part of the landscape.

‘On that hill.’ Sherlock pointed south. ‘There’s the house. What’s your opinion? Where’s our best observation point?’

John concentrated and scanned their surroundings.

‘We should put as much distance between us and the object as possible without obstructing our view. But that means we need binoculars and there’s always the danger of reflection from them. I would say … there,’ John pointed to the west, to a lofty plain slightly above the house.

Sherlock seemed satisfied with John’s choice and they walked silently along narrow paths and through the underbrush of the pine wood until they reached the little clearing. Sherlock crawled the rest of the way to the plain’s edge and then pulled out binoculars.

‘I don’t see anyone … ah, there he is! Don’t we know each other from the shot of an observation camera at St Pancras?’ he crowed. John saw Sherlock’s mouth quirk into its familiar satisfied smirk, prompting him to supply what felt at this point like the well-rehearsed lines of a play.

‘That was … great, as always,’ John conceded. ‘But how did you manage to find this needle in a haystack?’

Sherlock gave him the binoculars and turned on his back. The last light of the day bathed Sherlock’s face in a strange glow, making it impossible for John to focus. Instead of trying to get a look at their suspect, he allowed himself to get a little lost in the picture before him.

‘Last night,’ Sherlock started to explain to the clouds, ‘after poor Ginette suddenly didn’t feel up to more than sleeping –’

‘You didn’t give her a barbiturate, did you?’ John hissed, ashamed that his voice didn’t betray real concern.

‘Well, technically, I didn’t _give_ it to her; she drank it herself. It wasn’t that much anyway, I didn’t want to cause suspicion. Now where was I? Ah, yes, I left the hotel and, since her husband was not at home, I could search the house without expecting any unpleasant surprises. The amount of unnecessary things people have …’

It looked as if Sherlock had to mentally stomach the sight of the Hoffner household again.

‘But Hoffner’s bookkeeping was just as meticulous as the kitchen and that turned out to be a great advantage for me. He collects all his toll receipts so I could track the exit where he left the motorway most often. I also found holiday photos, and the geography matched this part of France. Some of the photos showed this house, but in just one of them I could detect a part of a place name sign ending with –èze. All things considered, St-Remèze was the only possibility left.’

‘Unbelievable,’ John said automatically. The corner of Sherlock’s mouth gave a little twitch before the detective took back the binoculars and rolled over to resume his observation of the house.

John inhaled. This felt so incredibly like … the old times. Except for the episode where Sherlock had shut himself in in the bathroom, it had been exactly like in the past – with the disguises, the travelling, the deducing. If he managed to ignore his own emotional confusion for the sake of their former friendship, wouldn’t that be the better solution? Leave things as they were, not say anything, and wait for the easy camaraderie of Baker Street to return?

Studying the shoulders and the long neck of the man lying next to him in the grass, John briefly contemplated this possibility until he could barely keep his fingers from touching what he was observing so carefully.

 _Definitely no way back,_ John decided grudgingly. So there was just one thing left for him, namely rehearsing the words he had pieced together during his train ride – and finding the courage to say them before the day was over.

 _I simply have to wait for the right time,_ John thought to himself. That was a challenge, because Sherlock didn’t move; he simply continued to stare through the binoculars as it gradually grew darker.

 _Would he listen to me if I just started talking?_ John wasn’t so sure about it given his experiences in their old life, and even when Sherlock announced that he had seen the second man from the station, he still kept his eyes glued to the house.

Debating with himself when to further break the silence, John rolled over to see if the moon was up and counted the first stars that appeared. _Damn, there had to be …_

‘Problem?’ John whipped his head around. Focusing on the house, Sherlock didn’t give the impression that he really wanted to engage in a conversation, but John decided this was as much of an invitation as he was going to get.

‘You know ...’ he started cautiously, ‘when we were in Paris, I also found out something.’

‘Really?’ Sherlock sounded genuinely surprised but didn’t turn his head.

‘Yes, really,’ John huffed. ‘Something important by the way. It’s … you see, I …’

‘Yes?’ Sherlock growled impatiently and John breathed in deeply.

‘I realised I feel more than friendship for you. A lot more,’ he blurted out.

There it was. Sweaty hands, heart racing, but he’d done it.

If he had expected a reaction, though, he was clearly mistaken. Sherlock was still watching the house, unmoving, and John started to try persuading himself that Sherlock hadn’t heard him and that he’d got away lightly, when the other man began to speak.

‘Don’t inflict that on yourself.’ It sounded like an order.

‘Why should I –?’

‘It’s impossible, _us,_ and I hope you understand that,’ Sherlock interrupted him.

‘No, no, you got that wrong,’ John hastily clarified. ‘I didn’t mean that we have to … erm, I know that you aren’t …’ he started, but his voice died. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t know anything. Sherlock had had no problems seducing Mrs Hoffner, but the incident in front of the diplomat’s house had been proof enough that he wasn’t exactly shy around men either.

 _It was a disguise, John!_ he reminded himself.

‘It’s impossible, I said.’ Sherlock turned around at last, but the cold voice made it clear that he didn’t expect any response. ‘This is not the time to get distracted by … emotions.’

His last word laced by contempt, Sherlock didn’t even meet John’s eyes before he turned away again and resumed his observation.

Thankful that he didn’t have to squirm under the other man’s gaze, John swallowed and hid his forehead under his arm. My God, he wasn’t 15 anymore, was he? And this was Sherlock Holmes, so what had he expected?

 _Something along those lines, that’s for sure,_ John reminded himself. Though more likely a joke glossing over everything, or a reproachful look and a repetition of their talk at Angelo’s. So although he hadn’t had his hopes up when he made his confession, reality still hurt a lot more than he expected.

John clenched his teeth and tried to convince himself that it had nevertheless been right to tell Sherlock. But, damn, it stung.

Peripherally, he felt the earth becoming damp and the light sneaking in under his arm told him that the moon was shining. Trying equally to ignore the cold ground and his muddled mind, John remained where he was until a rustling startled him from his thoughts. He removed his arm and was about to get up when he saw that it was just Sherlock kneeling by his feet to stay out of sight of the house. Sherlock fiddled with the hem of his jacket, his nervousness making all kinds of alarms go off in John’s mind.

‘There’s …’

Quickly, John rolled over and sat on his heels.

‘It’s okay, forget about it, I – ‘

‘No, John, listen … with the security checks at the Channel Tunnel, I thought that you don’t … I just wanted to tell you that I’d prefer you to have this here.’

Sherlock reached into his jacket to pull out a gun. An impassive look on his face, he presented it to John, who took it, automatically checked for a magazine and pulled back the slide.

‘I could only get two magazines, so we shouldn’t waste them.’

Sherlock offered the ammunition and John loaded the weapon and secured it. Pocketing the second magazine, he peeked at Sherlock and saw a slight trace of anticipation on his face – _at last._

‘Mmh, a Walter, not bad for a change.’ He weighed it in his hand and then experimentally aimed for a tree. ‘It feels quite good, but you only know for sure when you use it.’

He gave Sherlock a nod but this didn’t seem to reassure him. Instead, the idle hands started a nervous dance, fidgeting with the jacket again.

‘The two men in the house are armed and therefore I need your backup,’ Sherlock started as if he had to justify his gift once more. ‘Besides, I don’t want – ‘

John briefly clasped one of the jittery hands to hold it still.

‘I understand.’

Involuntarily, a smile stole on John’s face. It wouldn’t be easy, this new and burdened relationship, but although he had to live with the fact that everything he felt for Sherlock would always be one-sided, there was a chance for situations like this – situations when, with a little gesture, the self-proclaimed sociopath expressed more than he would ever be able to say in words.

John brushed the weapon lightly and then put it in his inner pocket.

‘Thank you, but I hope we won’t need it. Now what’s your genius plan to get us into the house?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Batik, may the Force be with you :)


	9. The chase

‘This is not a plan!’ John whispered urgently as he crept through the undergrowth.

‘They’ve been watching TV for quite some time now. We just have to find out if they’re really sitting in front of it.’

Sherlock approached the house, ducking, and then peeked into the window with the flickering light. Seeing him nod, John followed him around the corner. There, Sherlock reached inside a tilted window, unhinging something.

Opening the window farther and disappearing into the house took mere seconds for Sherlock. By the time John had managed to climb through the opening, too, he didn’t have time to check for Hoffner’s men before he saw the faint beam of Sherlock’s torch shining through the crack of a door.

John sneaked down the hallway and through the door as quickly as he could, nearly falling down the staircase that suddenly appeared in front of him. _Of course, the basement._

He closed the door just as a rumbling noise briefly sounded in the hallway.

 _Great, walking into a trap with just one exit,_ John thought. He took out his torch and pointed it in the direction Sherlock wasn’t already examining. It soon became clear that there was no one else in the room. A couple of boxes, old furniture, shelves to stock tins – that was it. John positioned himself next to the staircase and waited impatiently for Sherlock to finish.

‘If he’d been here, where would they have …?’ Unerringly, Sherlock went to the discarded furniture and lifted an upturned kitchen chair.

‘This is perfect to tie someone to it.’ He felt the paint that was already chipping off a little. ‘The arms here … and then the hands would have been …. ahh.’ Sherlock sounded pleased. ‘I knew you’d leave us something to work with, Lestrade.’

‘Yes, wonderful,’ John hissed. ‘But we have to go!’

Sherlock reluctantly put back the chair and followed him upstairs. Opening the door just a crack, John peeked through it, jerking back when he heard heavy steps approach.

‘Il n’y a plus de bière. Merde!’ someone shouted through the hallway and the steps retreated.

The gruff answer in German also revolved around the question of beer, John estimated, but the voice sounded far enough away that he beckoned Sherlock to follow him through the door. Inching along the wall, they eventually reached the end of the hallway – the front door already in sight – when they heard the voice again.  

‘Alors, qu’est ce que vous faites ici, hé? Franz, nous avons des visiteurs!’ the Frenchman suddenly shouted and John gave a start.

Brushing past him, Sherlock sped to the door, John following on his heels. He looked over his shoulder, expecting one of the thugs, but the hallway was empty.

‘Where are they?’

Sherlock turned the key and threw open the door.

‘Fetching their guns.’

Bolting out of the house, John was surprised to feel himself being dragged uphill.

‘Shit, Sherlock, why this way?’

‘Uphill path ... will slow them down.’

There was shouting behind them, growing louder and they could hear twigs snapping. The hulking men obviously weren’t deterred by the steep hill, Sherlock and John’s lead becoming smaller by the second. Even Sherlock had started panting whilst John already felt his lungs burning.

‘John.’ Sherlock gasped for breath. ‘We have to split up. Downhill, you … run to the east. I’ll … south. We’ll meet at the hotel.’

‘Forget it,’ was all John could manage. Fortunately, they had reached the peak and from then on raced downhill.

‘Trust me.’

Before John could react, Sherlock grabbed his arm and shoved him with brutal force into the shrubbery. Landing hard in the scratchy twigs, John rolled over to hide in the plants even more, remaining motionless until their two pursuers passed.

Believing them finally out of earshot, John stood and began following them at a distance. _Return to the hotel, my arse,_ John cursed. Sherlock was out there, he needed his help, he...

John stopped dead in his tracks. After a couple hundred yards, the forest just ended; stretching out before him was a plain with short shrubs and grass. Sherlock would be completely unprotected there, John thought frantically, straightening to see where the men’s torches were pointing.

He could vaguely discern a black figure moving over the moonlit area, the two thugs closely behind. Steering directly towards the end of the plain, Sherlock ran without slowing down to get his bearings, but even when John stepped uphill to get a better view, he couldn’t see where Sherlock was heading. There was – nothing. It all just ended somehow. And the moment John was about to start running to help him, Sherlock was gone.

At the same time, shots rang through the night, a faint echo somewhere in his numbed mind. John tried unsuccessfully to support himself against the rough bark of a pine tree when his legs gave way and he ended up curled in the low shrubbery, unable to move. The damp of the earth was slowly creeping through his trousers, but he barely realised it – because Sherlock had jumped.

Bombarding him with all the images he had so desperately tried to forget, John’s memory succumbed to the whirl of overwhelmingly painful impressions.

 _The fall! All of that blood …_ he squeezed his eyes shut. _Oh God, I can’t …_

It felt as if the world had come to a complete standstill, transporting him back to the pavement in front of Barts to make him relive the most terrible moment of his life. When the phone in his hand became silent and the distant figure on the roof suddenly dropped forward.

‘Wo ist der andere Typ?’

John snapped his eyes open.

‘Je n’ai aucune idée.’

The men were incredibly near. John didn’t dare to move, a torch searching the area just inches away from where he was lying. Only gradually did the steps recede and, after what seemed like an eternity, the voices died down.

Adrenalin spurring him on, John pushed himself up from the ground, pausing on his knees as he searched for any light. There was none; Hoffner’s men had most likely returned to the house. _Now what?_ he asked himself. Trying to calm himself and reactivate his senses, John stood up – carefully – to test the stability of his legs.

 _You can do it,_ he assured himself as years of military training drove him across the plain, taking cover as much as he could.

Approaching the cliff at the end of the plain, John felt his heart beating even more frantically than it had before. He inhaled. _I’ve been there, I survived,_ he repeated over and over again, and stubbornly forced himself to look down the ledge from which Sherlock had jumped – into the river below.

Drawing air into his lungs after holding his breath for much too long, John felt the urge to scream in relief. The water wasn’t very deep and jumping in there from the height of the cliff didn’t seem like a very good idea, but it was possible!

Clinging to this new hope, John glanced around. He had to get down there. Now. But even with his sense of urgency, it took him long minutes to find a place where he could skid down the steep slope and reach the river bank. There, vegetation was a lot denser than in the wood and John took out his tiny torch to check the shrubs and the rocks. Nothing.

He went back to the spot from which Sherlock had jumped, inspecting the water from afar because there was no bank on which to stand. He couldn’t make out much in the weak light.

Contemplating getting into the water himself, John quickly dismissed that notion. The current was much too strong; if Sherlock had lost consciousness, he would have been carried downstream by now.

 _Maybe he was washed up somewhere on the river bank, helpless,_ John thought. _I need to see more. Fuck. I have to …_

‘Stop!’ he commanded himself. ‘Calm down already, everything is all right.’

Purposefully, he marched back to where he came from. With his insufficient torch, there was no chance of making out any differences in the thick undergrowth; he needed to collect better equipment from the hotel.

 _That won’t be necessary anyway,_ he told himself as he was climbing the steep hill again. Sherlock was doubtlessly already back in the room, waiting.

John steered clear of Hoffner’s house while still trying to take the shortest way possible. Stumbling over roots, his frenzied heartbeat the rhythm his legs unconsciously followed, he didn’t let go of his mantra: Everything was all right. Sherlock would be back in their room.

Front door, then hallway, but the door to their room was still locked. John’s mind refused to process that last information until he entered the room and found nothing but a mocking display of things – clothes on the beds, a leftover piece of baguette and a bottle of water. The debilitating fear that he had successfully suppressed rushed back and fast-forwarded everything.

He grabbed the first-aid kit and a high-performance torch and barged out of the hotel, down the little path leading towards the forest. Almost slipping and falling in a gravelly bend, he kept his balance, only to run into a solid, wet wall instead. Only vaguely did he register his name before he was clutched violently.

‘John.’

It was the coldest kiss of his entire life. At the same time John felt like going up in flames, Sherlock’s hands and mouth scorching everywhere they touched him.

‘I heard gunshots, I thought ...’ icy lips whispered when they briefly broke the contact. John used the pause to catch his breath, yet the reprieve also woke up his doctor’s conscience.

‘You’re completely drenched and you’re shivering,’ he rasped. ‘Let’s go inside.’

The fierce embrace only tightened, possibly squeezing the life out of him.

‘Sherlock,’ John wheezed. Ragged breathing, every muscle taut to breaking point – something was wrong with this, John’s mind reasoned, but the massive surge of hormones swamping his brain made taking action rather challenging.

With a lot of effort, John extracted himself from the clutch of Sherlock’s arms.

‘Come on, you have to get out of your clothes,’ he said.

This seemed to boost Sherlock’s readiness to proceed towards the hotel, and he gripped John’s sleeve and pulled him along, making him stumble even as he prevented a fall.

The 2-minute jog to the house wasn’t enough to clear John’s mind and tell him what exactly had unsettled him so much about this sudden turn of events. Bracing himself, he avoided falling up the stairs to the house and, when Sherlock quickly closed the door to their room to press him against the wall, the nagging voice in the back of John’s head disappeared.

Those cold lips, now accompanied by a warm tongue, self-confidently erased any doubts. In fact, they erased any conscious thought at all, until John realised that his clothes were slowly becoming soaked.

‘Out ...’ He couldn’t manage more. Instead, he demonstratively opened Sherlock’s jacket. Still fumbling with the buttons, he felt a pull on his own T-shirt, which Sherlock was already trying to get off of him. The detective divested him of his clothing at an incredible speed and started helping John, whose slightly shaking hands had great problems openingthe fly of Sherlock’s trousers.

‘Touch me. Now!’

The gruff voice, slightly too forceful hands – John only peripherally took notice of them, because there it was at last, hot-cold skin laid bare for him to roam his hands over.

‘Damn, you’re …’ John ground out when Sherlock aligned their bodies and an erection started rubbing along his. He couldn’t help sagging against the wall, but even this tiny increase in the distance between them immediately led to another fierce attack from Sherlock’s mouth, the unchecked probing of his tongue vetoing John’s feeble attempts at keeping up with the other man’s onslaught.

 _Who cares,_ flashed through John’s head, but when his hand ran over the still frosty shoulder, words left his mouth automatically.

‘Cold ... shower.’

Nearly ripping him from his feet, Sherlock dragged him through the door to the bathroom and into the cubicle to push him face first into the tiles.

‘Whoa, what the –’ The initial cold spray of the water drew a yelp from John, cutting off what he had intended to say and allowing just enough of his hormonal haze to lift for his former unease to creep back despite the feel of Sherlock’s penis on his back and his teeth on John’s neck. As if Sherlock had known, he turned him around and John was engulfed by warming water, an extremely limber detective clinging to him like a second skin.

‘How do you want to be touched? Should I take our cocks in my hand?’ Sherlock growled. John only managed a nod.

Sherlock paused only long enough to slick his hands with soap. There was no way John could stop those long fingers or add his own hand to slow down the rhythm as Sherlock stroked their erections. Instead John was rushing towards his orgasm at breakneck speed when a painful grip around his testicles brought him up short.

‘Bloody hell,’ John cursed, relieved when the grip eased. Pulling back, Sherlock peered hard at him, that perfect cupid’s bow curling threateningly before he started to speak.

‘Not so fast,’ he snarled.

The discomfort gnawing somewhere at the back of John’s mind came back, only to be squashed again by the way Sherlock’s hand resumed pumping his cock with just the right pressure.

‘I want to feel you in me.’

John heard the words and registered the shift in Sherlock’s position, but he couldn’t deduce what was happening until he blinked and focused his eyes. Not even the arousing realisation that Sherlock was obviously pushing his own fingers into his opening, preparing himself, could allow John’s massive sense of _want_ to tear down every last mental barrier he had.

‘Condom.’ John didn’t manage a question, the word a mere plea.

‘There’s no need, I’m clean.’

‘But –’ The strong tongue urged its way in between his words and John fought for a breath of air. Tentatively, he felt for the long scar on Sherlock’s back. _The injuries, of course. Sherlock would have had himself checked after his return._

‘What about me?’ John gasped before a hand started rolling his balls lightly.

‘You …’ Sherlock mumbled against John’s throat. ‘Doesn’t change anything. As I said, there’s no need.’

John let the words sink in, and they effectively silenced the tiny protesting voice running against the primordial need elicited by slender fingers around his scrotum.

‘Now, fuck me,’ Sherlock ground out, ripping John from his musings. ‘And no holding back.’

‘I …’ he started, but a little bottle of lotion was pressed in his hands and then Sherlock was gone, vanished into the room. Somewhat bewildered, John grabbed a towel and dried himself, yet everything was a blur until he crossed the threshold and had one image forever etched in his mind.

Sherlock was waiting on the bed. On all fours. A spectacular vision of compliance and arrogance, and every thought of protection became but a fleeting memory for John. A few quick strides and John was at the bed, tunnel vision overpowering any lingering doubts.

He quickly positioned himself behind Sherlock, pressing himself against the long line of that pale back and running soothing hands down too-defined ribs as he lined up his cock along the crease of Sherlock’s arse.

When he carefully breached the outer ring of Sherlock’s rectum, he barely avoided climaxing with his first, tentative push inside. John concentrated on keeping his excessive need in check. It was a necessary step as Sherlock, even from his submissive position, forced John to do as he had demanded earlier.

Ignoring John’s caution, Sherlock pushed back to meet John’s thrust, making John’s cock sink in until it could go no farther. John felt as if he were drowning, unable to stop the world from spinning in the frenzy that followed. Sherlock felt entirely too good around him, too hot and too tight to resist, and too perfect for John to want a quick release.

He felt the shift as Sherlock reached for his own penis. Moments later, everything came apart when an incredible rhythm of clenching and relaxing fluttered around John’s length. All his synapses burned, reducing him to a pulsating cock that just couldn’t feel enough. Couldn’t be deep enough in that hot channel and couldn’t feel its grip around his shaft often enough.

Beyond rational thought, he followed the order he’d been given: He fucked Sherlock so hard that his hands left bruises on the slim hips he gripped until his world exploded and he felt his own warmth adding to the heat already surrounding him. Unwilling to let the link between them break, John reduced his thrusts to minute strokes of his softening cock, yet he hadn’t even recovered his breath when Sherlock pulled away and scrambled off the bed.

‘We have to hurry. Hoffner’s men might already be on their way,’ Sherlock said, grabbing one of the panniers.

Still dazed, John had nearly missed the words and Sherlock had already disappeared into the bathroom by the time the last of them sunk in. As the door closed behind the man who only moments earlier had been willingly pliant beneath him, John fervently wished he really hadn’t heard them.

‘I hope you didn’t get the wrong idea,” Sherlock had said. “Because something like that … it shouldn’t happen again.’

  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much, Batik, for sticking with this version of post-Reichenbach although it's now officially AU :)


	10. The clue

‘It’s the limousine we saw in front of Hoffner’s house again,’ Sherlock said from his position by the door, and John compressed his lips. It was unlikely that he wanted some kind of reply, not after the silent packing and the hours of hiding without uttering a word. For all that they had hurried to leave their hotel room behind, they had gone only as far as the bike shed, knowing they’d be easy to spot -- and easy targets -- if they’d tried to flee on their bikes. At some point, their pursuers would hopefully give up their search, making it possible to depart.

 _We’re stuck. Great,_ John thought. Both unbelievably hungry and sick to his stomach, he had initially tried not to appear too upset, but Sherlock wouldn’t even look at him, so he eventually spared himself even that effort.

Movement made John glance in Sherlock’s direction again, but the man had only taken out his notebook, writing something down before crossing out what he had just jotted.

 _Even a bloody piece of paper gets more attention._ John inhaled, trying to stifle the dejectedness creeping up his back like an anaesthetic, dulling everything in its advance. Who was he kidding? Had he really thought sex would change the way Sherlock was acting lately? Not likely.

To get his mind off his anger, he counted the spokes of his bike’s wheels until this annoyed him even more than staring at the wood of the wall.

Sherlock was right; he should just pull himself together. People fucked all the time without it meaning anything. And there was much more at stake than his dignity, so the only option that remained was soldiering on, like always.

John gritted his teeth and started peeling splinters off planks. This time he’d hopefully be able to hang onto a little bit of his sanity when the whole thing exploded in his face. Or landed on the pavement in front of Barts.

 _But it wouldn’t._ This time it was _not_ going to end like that. No one was going to die. Not if he had a say.

Energized by the thought, John got up.

‘Do we have anything to eat?’ he asked. Still absorbed in thought, Sherlock pointed at the panniers.

‘Energy bars or something.’

Thankful for the distraction, John rummaged around in the indicated bag to get the food. The bars had been squeezed flat but, together with the water, they were something resembling food. Still chewing, John went to Sherlock, offered him a bite of the sticky bar – more to annoy him than anything else – and quietly enjoyed the stony glare he got in return.

Crooking his neck, he tried to find out what the detective had been scribbling on his notepad.

‘What are you writing?’

Sherlock frowned as if he had already explained that to John several times before seeming to realise that this conversation might only have taken place in his mind.

‘Lestrade left us a message in the house.’

‘Oh, really? I thought you were just –’ John began, but a dark look shut him up.

‘As I said, this message tells us something about where to go or includes some other essential information but …’ Sherlock’s voice fell. ‘I’ve not found out what it is ... _yet_ ‘

John strained his eyes.

‘Let me see, maybe I can help your genius brain.’ Ignoring the sceptical look, John rephrased regardless. ‘Or … I’ll help you focus, what about that?’ He quirked an eyebrow and Sherlock showed him a sheet with some letters.

‘This is how he scratched them into the frame of the chair. Possibly with his fingernails or some item he could get his hands on. “SETST JEAN” it said. But who’s this “Jean”? None of Hoffner’s men was named Jean and I didn’t see it in any of the houses. And the first word? Has he misspelled it?’

John slowly moved along the letters with his finger, from the right to the left because of his awkward position. He had not reached the end of the line when Sherlock’s hand landed on his with brutal precision, clutching his fingers until they were twisted painfully. John wanted to protest but a look at Sherlock’s enthusiastic face stopped him.

‘Of course, that’s it – two words! St Jean! John, the map.’

Following the order unthinkingly, John reached into a pannier and pulled out the map before Sherlock practically ripped it from his hands. After hectically browsing the place index, he looked up; his frown spoke volumes.

‘No place with that name?’ John asked.

‘On the contrary, twenty-four of them. The French and their saints,’ he sneered.

‘Now what do we do?’

‘Two of them aren’t far away, St-Jean-du-Gard and St-Jean-du-Bruel. Tonight, we’ll start with the first one. But what’s the meaning of the first word?’ In a blink, Sherlock had tuned out everything again. With nothing more to do, John sat down on the floor.

Leaning against the wall, he contemplated the first part of the riddle, his eyelids becoming heavier by the minute. He tried to stay awake; each time he nodded off and woke up with a jerk, he vowed to stay alert. By no means would he fall asleep on a shed’s floor, in the middle of France, while he was being pursued by killers, his friend had been kidnapped and his only ally was Sherlock Holmes, a returned-from-the-dead-and-slightly-more-deranged-for-it sleuth.

The next time he opened his eyes, John was lying on coarse planks and had to shake the distinct feeling that he was back in Afghanistan, with crickets chirping much too loudly and a faint breeze brushing over his face. John stirred, and in contrast to his shoulder, his face was cushioned somehow – someone had improvised a pillow for him.

‘Sherlock?’

Stepping from the shadow of the corner, his former flatmate’s face was inscrutable in the weak moonlight that shone through the small plastic window.

‘You’re awake. Let’s go.’

Sherlock stepped outside and John heaved himself up to follow, a little wobbly on his legs.

‘What … but our bikes are still inside,’ he remarked tiredly.

‘We don’t need bicycles.’

John’s eyes had adjusted to the light, but he still wasn’t sure if he could trust them.

‘I’m not getting on a motorbike. Especially not when you’re driving it!’ His mind now seemed to have found a reason to be wide awake.

‘Well, then _you’ll_ drive,’ Sherlock said conversationally. ‘But let me start it for you. May I?’

After a couple of minutes of Sherlock fumbling with the cables, the pitiful motorbike uttered a high-pitched whine and continued with an unimpressive rumble.

‘You know you made a French kid very unhappy with this theft?’ John asked with a smirk.

‘Nonsense, this vehicle belongs to an overweight pensioner who fetched his too greasy croissants with it this morning. Now he has to walk – he should thank me for easing his coronary heart disease. Now, could we go?’

John straddled the bike and tested the hand brake and the clutch. It had been some years since he had last ridden a motorbike and he sincerely hoped that what people said about riding a bicycle was also true for motorbikes. The shock absorbers compressed noticeably when Sherlock settled in behind him and it took some effort for John to keep the bike balanced.

‘And you are sure this ominous rope configuration you used to tie the bags to the bike will work?’

‘Yes, now go. And switch off the light.’

‘What? Are you crazy?’

‘I said: Go. Now go!’

The 50 miles to St-Jean-du-Gard could have been quite relaxing, because the streets were almost empty and it was a mild night. Yet the nerve-racking sound of the motor closely resembled a lawn mower and Sherlock had obviously decided to be the worst passenger possible.

Constantly giving John instructions on which exit to take -- but never right before the actual crossroads -- John was forced to ask for clarification again and again. As an answer, he was either mocked or ignored -- and then Sherlock started squirming on the back of the short seat.

When they at last passed the place-name sign to St-Jean-du-Gard, John breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Where should I stop?’

‘Over there, next to the shrubbery.’

After rumbling over a short stretch of grass, John braked.

‘You’re somewhat rusty in your driving skills,’ Sherlock said, dismounting the motorbike.

‘Forget it. There’s no way I’m letting you drive,’ John retorted, unable to stifle a knowing grin. ‘And now?’

‘We’ll hide the motorcycle and search the houses. There are barely more than a dozen and most of them can be checked tonight.’

‘And how do we get in?’

The weak light of the street lamp reflected off the metal of a bunch of lock picks.

‘Like we always do.’

****

The rural exodus could also be felt in France, John reckoned, because the few houses that were inhabited obviously weren’t the lairs of sinister criminals and most of the others seemed to be empty holiday homes of keyed up metropolitans.

‘Not exactly my idea of French cuisine,’ John whispered, pocketing a can of tomato soup. If they didn’t find a useful trace, he could at least do something about his rumbling stomach.

‘Could you hurry? I’m not interested in staring into the barrel of some native’s gun just because you needed to follow your gut instinct.’

‘Very funny,’ John hissed as he turned to leave, grabbing a package of crackers on their way out of the house. Sherlock even locked the door again to avoid raising suspicion, and they walked over the fields surrounding the village towards their starting point.

‘The abandoned cottage in the south might be a good place to hide the motorbike and stay for the day,’ Sherlock said. John understood this was likely not an invitation for small-talk, but he soon realised those were the last words Sherlock planned to utter for an indefinite time.

They set out for the structure, easily gaining access to its barn via a door with a broken lock. After a couple of hours of watching Sherlock alternately stare into empty space or look out of one of the broken windows, John drank the cold tomato soup and munched some of the crackers. Not for the life of him could he think of a topic of discussion that hadn’t been recently ruled out by Sherlock or unacceptable even when they lived together.

Like the weather. Or sex.

 _Brilliant_ , he cursed inwardly. How could Sherlock just ...?

Pushing those thoughts away, he put the half-eaten box of crackers into one of his panniers. Sherlock had said it -- he should forget the whole episode. Yet how exactly one was supposed to forget something like _that_ was beyond John.

Bracing himself for even more silence bordering on awkwardness, he sat down on the floor’s broken tiles. He hadn’t been advised not to sulk, had he? Maybe that would help him brave the next round of Sherlock’s unfocused staring, because slowly but surely John was giving up on his hope that the man would ever again leave his mind palace.

John registered movement but assumed Sherlock was just changing his position, placing himself next to the door instead of the window, until John heard rustling and looked up.

Sherlock was rummaging around in his pannier and then fished some gadget out of it. He unfolded it and seemed for a moment to search for the right spot to place it. A beam of light shining heavenward through the cracked roof met his approval.

‘Are you trying to contact your mother ship?’ John asked. ‘And if so, could they arrange for a shower?’

Sherlock paid no attention to him and connected his smartphone.

‘This is a photovoltaic recharging device. I hope you can see the advantages,’ was the dry answer.

‘That’s great!’ John stood up. ‘My battery gave up yesterday. Maybe I could …’ He paused.

Sherlock compressed his lips and kept fiddling with his telephone. John saw that it took him a while to force out the question, but when he eventually managed, it sounded as if it was choking him.

‘What?’

The look, the posture – this was not going to end well, and briefly John doubted his own resolve to address the topic. _Damn, I’m not some idiotic underling,_ he told himself. Still, he couldn’t keep from stuttering when he started to speak.

‘I just think … I think now that we have a trace, it could be possible that Mycroft’s sources – ‘

‘No.’ Sherlock’s knuckles were turning white and John was afraid the phone would break any second.

John bit his tongue. It was just like in the old days. Sherlock decided on something and that was the end of it. No discussion, no alternatives.

 _But why have I slipped back into my docile behaviour so quickly?_ John wondered. Was the _new John_ gone already, ousted by the necessities of their travelling and some unsettling sex?

Unable to overcome his internal opposition to an escalation of their argument, John grudgingly answered his own question in the affirmative. Giving himself something to do to stop himself from wallowing in the feeling of defeat this realisation induced, he improvised a bed with the help of old straw. After some tossing and turning, he must have even managed to sleep, because he woke up to fading light and the familiar sound of crickets.

John’s eyes slowly got used to the half-light, Sherlock’s figure next to a window becoming more and more discernible.

Unblinking, tense body and no trace of the ease that had been a part of _The Work_ in former times, he looked like an imitation of himself, John thought. This was not the Sherlock of old but someone whose radiant personality had been dimmed by factors John only partially understood.

Instead, there were just head-high walls, raised to keep everyone -- including John -- out.

‘Can’t you swallow your pride? I mean, just for once in your life?’ John asked before he had realised it. Something _had_ to be said, though. He got up, trying to assume a self-confident position.  

‘I beg your pardon?’ Sherlock didn’t turn his head.

‘You know what I mean. We don’t even have to tell Mycroft a lot, just enough to help him pull some strings.’

‘Pull some strings, _exactly_. No, thank you,’ he sneered.

What a stubborn arse! John felt anger boiling up and breathed in deeply to stop himself from snapping.

‘My God, Sherlock, this is not about your idiotic brothers’ feud.’ It was becoming increasingly harder to keep his voice down. ‘What about Greg? Shit, we don’t even know if he’s still alive!’

Sherlock turned his head; in the fading light of the day, his face looked downright distorted. ‘If there was something wrong with him, my _brother_ ,’ he spat, ‘would surely have found a way to contact us.’

‘Great!’ John threw up his arms. ‘I’m sure we’ll get a message when he’s dead.’

He glared at Sherlock and took two steps towards the unhinged door. ‘You know what? I’m ready to do whatever it takes to save him! And what have you –?’

He didn’t get any further before he was rudely shoved against the wall and his back collided painfully with uneven stones.

‘You didn’t ... How dare you say something like that?’ Sherlock shouted and grabbed John’s collar. ‘What do you know about the things I have or haven’t done?’

The furious bitterness in his words was almost tangible as it wrapped itself around them and John was briefly taken aback by the unusual display of emotions.  

‘Sure, I don’t know anything. It’s just _me_ ,’ he said, burying his dejection at those words and refusing simply to accept defeat. Not this time.

‘But if I’ve no right to do something like phoning Mycroft, what right do I have to …’ _fuck you?_ he finished in his head. Clenching his teeth, John swallowed against a lump in his throat. ‘You … you know what? Fuck _you_!’

He wrenched free and, without looking back, stomped through the doorway and headed for the main road. He needed to get away from that communication failure on two legs; if he remembered correctly, there had been a camping ground a couple of miles to the west.

Such an idiot! Why could something _not_ be about him for once? Of course Mycroft had acted like an arse, and for months John had toyed with the idea of taking his anger out on him personally, but times had changed. Sherlock wasn’t dead and Greg was in danger, real danger, not some fake-fall-from-a-roof act.

John ripped a twig from a shrub he passed. His fingers needed something to do if he was to resist his urge to hit something, and sore knuckles after an impact with a tree trunk weren’t high on his agenda.

When he reached the camping ground, the long walk had eased his wrath to a degree. Joining a family of four that was just passing the entrance, he entered the compound without being noticed. The ugly little buildings that housed the facilities were almost empty and in one of the cubicles he disrobed quickly and ducked behind the screen.

The water only ran for a limited amount of time before he had to press the button again, but it was hot and it felt glorious to remove the dust of their improvised quarters. Shutting out the world, he let the noise of the water flow over his head and deafen his senses – until a force of nature swept him away.

One second he was basking in the warmth of the shower; the next he shivered as his back hit cold tiles. Sherlock’s wrath was so palpable that John had to fight a brief panic, but a look in Sherlock’s eyes also conveyed something aside from the obvious rage.

‘Don’t ever do that again!’ Sherlock whispered with barely contained anger and John could feel every tense inch of the naked body pressed against his.

‘What?’ John snarled before a hand on his mouth muffled his voice. Sherlock activated the button to let the spray drown their talk. ‘Did you follow me here?’

‘Of course I followed you!’ Sherlock hissed. ‘What did you expect? That I’d let you run out into the night, in some foreign country and, above all, without your weapon?’ He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Damn, John …’

Maybe it was the surprise of hearing Sherlock swearing that distracted him, or maybe something in him had already anticipated the soft lips on his throat, but John wasn’t startled any more. The fingers that could get him hard in a fraction of the time it took him to do the job himself brushed along his shaft. Then Sherlock was pumping his cock with expert dexterity, managing to shut off his brain just as quickly as they had the night before. Even when those fingers suddenly disappeared, John couldn’t muster any protest.

Unresisting, he let himself be pulled away from the wall, turned away from it and drawn close again. Sherlock used their new positions to lean against the tiles and bring them to the same level. John used the brief reprieve to brace himself for whatever was about to happen.

The moment his critical inner voice popped up, asking him what the hell he had got himself into, it was interrupted by a hand that clutched the short hair of his neck. John was immediately thankful for that hand, because he otherwise might not have been able to withstand the hard kiss that threatened to make him stumble backwards even as Sherlock pulled him forward.

He tried to return that kiss with the same fierceness. Tried to nip and bite his way through it. Tried to join Sherlock’s long fingers around their cocks and emulate their movements. Yet he had to accept the fact that he couldn’t – wasn’t able to fight that demanding tongue and couldn’t keep up with the frantic pumping of the hand.

Instead, he simply gave in, breaking their kiss to lean against Sherlock, hanging on to him and letting himself be rushed to his climax. Still, like the last time, John was second.

Even in this, all he could do was follow. Eyes closed and with Sherlock’s guttural moan from when he came still resounding in the cubicle, John relinquished his hold on the burning need in his groin and let slick fingers mercilessly steal his orgasm from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And zap! Batik did the magic again. Thanks my lovely beta.


	11. The clue

        

‘What about we nick some food?’ John asked when he clumsily pulled his T-shirt over his wet body. Talking about what had just happened wouldn’t be of any use anyway – Sherlock’s last comment on what it meant they were doing together was still very present in his memory and he didn’t need a reminder.

Sherlock peeked out the cubicle’s door before he answered.

‘If you think it necessary.’

‘Yes, I bloody well do,’ John hissed. ‘When was the last time you ate?’

‘Train to Bollène.’

Deciding that the rolling of his eyes would be enough of an answer, John squeezed past Sherlock and quickly exited the shower house before sneaking between shrubs, trees and parked cars to find a caravan that looked uninhabited.

‘They surely have some tins stocked,’ John whispered, motioning Sherlock to the door. As expected, Sherlock opened the lock in mere seconds, providing access to what turned out to be a plentiful source of durable food. Crisp bread, dried fruit and chocolate were in the larder, prompting John to pocket as many of the chocolate bars as possible whilst Sherlock grabbed two cans of the French lemonade that stood in the back of the shelf.

‘Quite a strange assortment,’ John remarked and slid some slices of the dry bread under his T-shirt.

‘For Germans? I don’t think so.’

‘How do you know they’re Germans?’

‘Number plate, John. Among other things.’

Sherlock tugged John out of the caravan, leading the way when they reached the shrubbery again. It took them a while to find a hole in the fence surrounding the area but eventually they managed to return to the street.

‘So what do you want to start with?’ John asked, reaching into his pocket. ‘Milk chocolate or, let’s see, milk chocolate?’

He held two identical bars out to Sherlock, who scrunched up his nose.

‘Nothing, thanks.’

‘You got that wrong,’ John informed him. ‘The choice is between milk and, well, milk. That’s it. Unless you want to start with the crisp bread.’

He waved one of the bars in front of Sherlock’s face until it was snatched from his hand, initiating a silent dinner that lasted the whole way back to the farm. Washing down the combination of chocolate and bread with the lemonade, John watched as Sherlock attached their bags to the motorbike.

‘Refreshed for the ride?’ Sherlock asked as he started fiddling with the cables.

‘Culinarily, this trip leaves much to be desired,’ John grumbled, but the high whine of the motorbike made every other attempt at a conversation impossible.

Expecting a re-enactment of the previous night, with an impatient Sherlock constantly annoying him from his place on the back seat, John was surprised to find him rather acquiescent this time. Fortunately, the second journey was shorter, but in turn, the village was a lot bigger.

St-Jean-du-Bruel was nicely situated on a little hill and full of two-storey houses lining narrow streets. John groaned – it would take ages to search. An overgrown piece of land provided them with cover and a brook, possibly a small river, murmured faintly somewhere in the vicinity. John spread out his jacket, lay down on it and watched the sun rise.

‘How the hell are we going to find anyone around here?’ he asked.

‘We start at one point, rule out the impossible and come to a conclusion, like always,’ Sherlock remarked, rolling over to face the other direction.

Unable to sleep, John brushed his teeth and then tried to scrape off some of his stubble, giving up quickly for the lack of water. He shifted restlessly between sitting and lying down, killing time by peeling the bark off twigs and trying to identify birds by their sounds. At last, at some point during the morning, he dozed off, only to wake up in his own sweat in the afternoon.

Gingerly, he sat up and unbuttoned his jacket; fortunately the sun hadn’t hit him directly because someone had placed a pullover in an elder bush to block the worst of it.

‘Great,’ John cursed, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. Thoughtful Sherlock had made one of his rare appearances again. But where was he?

John looked around, waited a bit and sweated a bit more before the detective finally fought his way through the shrubbery. Even he didn’t seem to be completely unaffected by the unexpected heat and John noted some tiny beads of sweat on Sherlock’s upper lip.

‘How hot is it? 30?’ John quipped.

Sherlock took out his smartphone and typed.

‘29, according to the nearest weather station.’

John rolled his eyes and, in return, received a bottle of water as a peace offering. Cold water!

‘Where did you get that?’

‘The local supermarket – or rather, the village grocer – doesn’t have any surveillance and it’s managed by a 75-year-old Madame who prefers that occupation to the old people’s home. Nevertheless we shouldn’t be seen together.’

Thankful for the food, John dipped a piece of baguette into the jam and Sherlock drank coffee from a can.

‘Wow, what sacrilege,’ John grinned as Sherlock took a swig. ‘What else is there in the village?’

‘Let’s see, a pizzeria, a post office in the grocery store, a shoemaker, a plumber, a tourist information center, a public toilet, an unlicensed brothel on the street leading out of town –’

‘Thanks, that’s enough, exactly what I wanted to hear.’ John got up but Sherlock looked at him in mock incredulity.

‘But I think it opens in the evening,’ he said deadpan.

John snickered. ‘Idiot.’

He cut his way through the shrubs and marched up the winding road. Whatever people said about the other St-Jeans on the list, this one had its perks, John thought. Old houses, cobblestone pavement and, due to the time of year, almost no tourists.

Heaving a sigh, he took in the friendly atmosphere. If the situation were just slightly different, without the silence, the aggressive sex, and especially without the concern for Greg’s safety, this could have been the holiday he had often planned but never put into action.

Not a year ago, Greg and he had last talked about travelling together; only half joking, they had even started discussing possible destinations. The plans had never come to fruition, but they had nevertheless been a step towards enjoying life again.

When John returned to their hiding place, Sherlock lay on the ground and John couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or thinking. It didn’t matter anyway. Talking, if possibly to himself, was something Sherlock couldn’t forbid.

‘Last year, something really unbelievable happened to Greg,’ John started. ‘He arrested a suspect and she was put in custody. The next day they found out: _She_ really was a _man_. Greg berated the officer who had messed up the search of the suspect, but he had to live with the ridicule for weeks.’

John smiled at the thought of the DI’s heartfelt indignation when he told John about the jeers and jokes circulating at the Yard.

Looking at Sherlock revealed no reaction, just silence. Maybe he really was sleeping, John thought, but then, without opening his eyes, Sherlock began to speak.

‘The good detective inspector really has to have his eyes checked. Four years ago, he arrested a bearded Russian.’

‘And who was that?’

‘Me.’

John snorted. ‘Must have been one of your better disguises.’

‘I fooled you in Paris.’

A lopsided grin. _The_ lopsided grin, John realised with amazement when Sherlock opened his eyes.

‘Wonder why Greg didn’t kick your arse more often, really. Do you remember when the forensics team was unavailable and it was raining?’

‘I certainly do.’ The smile again.

‘You forced us to open all the gully covers in the vicinity of the murder because something could have ended up there and you didn’t trust the ordinary policemen securing the scene to spot it.’

‘We did find the parking ticket that got the murder convicted, didn’t we?’

‘God, I’ve never heard anyone swearing as much as Greg that night. We were totally covered in mud afterwards, Greg’s trench coat looking like a camo suit.’

‘He shouldn’t wear those anyway. They’re hideous,’ Sherlock declared.

‘He told you he’d make you wash it by hand.’

‘I would have liked to see him try.’

John laughed. ‘That would’ve been a hoot. You are lucky that he’s so patient.’

‘I’ve got the ultimate leverage against him.’

‘Against Greg?’ John asked, knitting his brows. ‘The man’s a saint. What leverage could you possibly...? I mean, apart from the fact that he covered up for you more than was strictly good for him.’

‘I ordered him to a derelict building once. The force was still on its way when we entered, finding a dead body right when we crossed the threshold. It was clear that the murderer was still in the house.’

‘How so?’

‘I repeat: It was clear _to me_ that the killer was still inside. Although we only had one torch, we went after him.  It was an old mansion, a lot of creaking floor boards and such. Concealed doors, too, obviously, because the suspect suddenly appeared out of nowhere …’ Sherlock paused, eyes wide in feigned excitement. ‘… and that’s when he did it.’

‘Did what?’ John asked, exasperated. ‘Damn it, Sherlock, _who_ did it?’

‘Lestrade. He … shrieked. It was brief and we toppled the man before he could leave the room, but I know what I heard. He screamed in a high-pitched voice when the guy popped up next to him, and I think that was partly the reason why the murderer didn’t get away.’

They both grunted out a laugh.

‘He’s a great friend, really, I wouldn’t have known what to …’ John stopped. He should keep anything too personal out of this. Especially from the time of Sherlock’s absence. ‘You’re quite lucky he’s in charge of you.’

‘In charge of me.’ Sherlock huffed. ‘Rather burdened with me. Cursed would fit.’

‘Ahh, come on. He’s always given you a second chance. And a fifth. Or a thirty-fourth.’

They grinned in unison, yet John’s smile quickly faltered. ‘We’re going to find him, aren’t we?’

In a flash, the old Sherlock was gone, replaced by the grim determination John had seen so often lately.

‘Yes, we will,’ he ground out. ‘We’ll find him and whoever did this will pay dearly.’

The last utterance seemed to be a reason for Sherlock to tune out again. John resigned himself to an uneventful afternoon, alternately napping and looking at the sky. In contrast to the days before, the glum mood didn’t manage to grab hold of him. Instead he revelled in the impression that, for the first time during their trip, Sherlock and he had shared something that was meaningful for both of them.

The feeling was still there when he was awakened in the middle of the night, and it didn’t matter that Sherlock pushed him on at first and a little later made him wait at a street corner for half an hour. Leaning against the flaking plaster of a building, John chuckled quietly, ignoring the slight guilt going along with the realisation that he felt … happy.

Sherlock’s shadow slunk along the narrow alley.

‘What did you find?’ John whispered when the man had reached him and positioned himself next to him, their shoulders almost touching.

‘Nothing, obviously.’

‘And now?’

‘I covered the area south of this street. There was a way over the roofs but it required some … well, athleticism.’

‘Yeah, thanks for making me feel even older.’

‘The rest is footwork, though. You’ll do fine.’

That sardonic comment was the starting signal for more suffering than John would have anticipated upon seeing the village. Although he had been rather sceptical from the beginning – its size making it impossible to reach quick results – the sheer number of fences, stairs, windows and walls he had to surmount was rather unexpected in the end. After a couple of hours they had only been able to check half of the houses. Still, by the time they arrived back at their camp shortly before daybreak, John’s feet hurt like hell and he felt like every pore had decided to produce as much sweat as possible.

‘I’ll be back soon, don’t worry,’ he told Sherlock, not waiting for an answer. He staggered towards the soothing background noise that had accompanied then since their arrival. Somewhere out there he was sure to find the river; when the gurgling became louder, it didn’t take long for the glittering surface to appear in front of him.

Thanking central France for its abundance of water, John left his clothes on the river bank and stepped into the little pool that had formed behind a natural barrage. It wasn’t much wider than twelve feet and not deeper than John’s shoulders; above all, it was freezing cold.

He caught his breath and got used to the temperature slowly, some strokes from one end of the pool to the other keeping him warm. Hearing a noise, he looked back at the river bank and saw Sherlock’s smartphone hovering like a giant firefly in the darkness.

‘What are you doing? Come in!’ John shouted but Sherlock didn’t move.

‘I’m trying to find out if this stream is microbiologically objectionable.’

For a moment, John was convinced he would be able to resist. Yet it was too tempting to step out of the boxers, swim a little nearer to the water’s edge and then throw them at Sherlock’s face. Not waiting for a reaction, John dashed towards the opposite bank of the river. He was just beginning to believe he was safe, that his attempt to goad Sherlock into action hadn’t worked, when he was pulled underwater by a warm hand, drowned by a sinewy body and then revived by lips that simultaneously stole his breath.

‘And?’ John gasped. ‘Microbiologically objectionable?’

‘Yes, very.’

Breaking the kiss, John extracted himself from Sherlock with no small amount of difficulty.

‘Then we’d better get out, don’t you think?’

He dove to the bank and hurried across the big and slippery stones in the shallow water as quickly as possible. Behind him, John heard splashing and an occasional curse, but he didn’t dare to look back because it was only a matter of time before his flight would be over.

As he’d predicted, shortly before he reached their camp, Sherlock caught up with him. Threw him down on the patchy grass and covered him like an ice-cold blanket. Made John forget the bumps and stones under his back, forget the water in his ears and the goosebumps on his skin – because they would be vaporized in seconds anyway.

Just as quickly as the pleasant frotting had begun, it was over. Sherlock jumped up and walked in the direction of their camp, leaving John on the ground, flabbergasted. Tentatively, he pushed himself up and started to will down his erection, when something massive landed on him.

‘John.’ Growling, with a shake of a head. ‘Patience, if you please. Now I have to start all over again.’

Of course Sherlock knew a remedy against the cold, and when his mouth engulfed John’s cock and cautiously explored the tip, the contrast to the rest of his body was entirely too much for John’s brain. It short-circuited to his crotch and he didn’t feel the sharp stones under his elbows or his cold toes anymore. What remained was just the soft touch of _those_ lips joining the movements of _that_ tongue and the almost unbearable suction of _that_ mouth.

And the painful pull on his testicles that yanked him back from the edge when he was about to come? John couldn’t even find it in himself to object, because he knew what would follow: something comfortably pleasurable, like a tongue leaving a trail on his belly and chest. Or his taste on Sherlock’s lips.

But it was the sudden tightness around his cock that convinced John that he didn’t care what remained of his sanity. Panting for breath, he just tried to process the fact that Sherlock had impaled himself on him in one go and started riding him with no consideration for John’s slipping control.

And although the incredible feeling of that hot tight sheath alone could have made John give in to the burning that was consuming him, it was not his undoing in the end. Instead, watching this reckless genius approach his climax – body in complete ecstasy and a suppressed moan on his lips – forced him over the edge. When Sherlock let go, John couldn’t do anything but follow.

Just the sounds of their laboured breathing echoing in the night, John slowly felt the outside world seizing hold of his mind again. Focusing on the man who continued to massage himself with semen-coated fingers, simultaneously clenching his muscles as if unwilling to let the softening cock in him slip free of his body, John could not shake the feeling that what he saw was too unworldly to be real after all.

He took in the lean line of Sherlock’s neck, his head thrown back and his lips slightly parted as if he now wanted to voice the moan he had stifled. Sherlock was bathing in the first rays of morning light like a lizard on a stone, a primeval creature, beautiful, wild – and just as shy.

All it took was a light breeze blowing across them, startling Sherlock to alert. He straightened – none-too-carefully removing himself from John’s cock – and disappeared towards the river.

John got up too, now painfully aware of the imprints of the gravel on his backside.

‘Wait, damn it!’

He resolutely edged his way through the shrubs, following the distant beam of the torch, still necessary on the uneven terrain in the low light. If this was another case of ‘fuck and run’, so be it, but this time, he’d adapt. More importantly, he wouldn’t let himself be affected by those complete changes of mood anymore.

Washing, returning to the camp, dipping bread in jam – it didn’t matter that there was total silence again, John simply refused to let it oppress him. If this was what he could have, it was more than he had ever hoped for. Then again, looking at the man who was now fiddling with the charger, searching for a bright spot among the complex shadows of the plants, also meant that John grudgingly had to accept that he didn’t have any idea who Sherlock really was.

Perhaps it was time to remedy that, he decided. He didn’t have to start with the two missing years, but what about the things this journey had shown?

‘Sherlock, since when do you speak fluent French?’ he asked hesitatingly. ‘I’m sure they teach you all kinds of things at those posh boarding schools, but this –’

‘Say that again!’

John couldn’t place the excited look on Sherlock’s face but he patiently repeated his words.

‘Why do you speak such good French?’

‘Which foreign language does Lestrade speak?’

John tried to remember what Greg had told him about his childhood and youth. Not much, actually.

‘He was at one of those Christian Schools.’

‘So it was Latin when he started, maybe Greek,’ Sherlock murmured.

‘And I heard him speak German once, at least he tried. We were at one of those horrible beer fests and, of course, the waitress didn’t understand him.’

‘So, no French?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Sherlock jumped up and tried to pace, although the undergrowth made it almost impossible.

‘Lestrade doesn’t know French but he understood some of the things the Austrian said.’

He searched his jacket’s pockets and took out the notepad.

‘The first word! He didn’t mean “set” like in “set out for”. We shouldn’t go to St-Jean. He really wrote it down wrongly because he didn’t know the French spelling.’

John couldn’t read anything, because Sherlock was waving the pad much too near his eyes, but when he wanted to reach for it, Sherlock went on.

‘He meant Sète, on the coast! Wait a second ...’

Sherlock typed something in his phone before showing John a tiny map with a big place-name icon: Rue St-Jean, in the north of the city.

‘Brilliant,’ John said, looking up, but Sherlock had already spun and disappeared in the shrubbery.

Expecting a rather sudden departure, John packed the panniers and waited, anticipation and impatience coursing through him in equal measure. Surprisingly soon, snapping twigs announced Sherlock’s return. As John had predicted, Sherlock simply grabbed his panniers and motioned for John to follow.

On the side of the road, a car stood parked, one of its doors slightly open.

‘Couldn’t you find something a bit more … reliable?’ John asked, eying it sceptically. It looked as if it would fall apart if they both got into it.

‘Only dangerous criminals can break into modern cars,’ Sherlock said with a frown as he started the engine with a screwdriver. John ignored the torn-off seat belt and forced himself to relax; it wasn’t so difficult after all, because the speed limit of the car fortunately fell short of the official speed limit on French motorways.

Two hours later, they reached the outskirts of their destination. They parked at a distance from the town and walked into Sète, pausing for a discreet look at their surroundings. No sooner had they found Rue St-Jean than John heard something – an all-too-familiar something – click.

‘Mr Holmes, Dr Watson. Welcome,’ a reserved voice said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapters get longer and longer, but Batik stays and betas. Thanks!


	12. The entrance

From the outside, 34 Rue St-Jean looked abandoned. From the inside, it showed an acceptable state of repair.

‘Sit,’ commanded the young voice whose owner also had pulled the gun out of John’s jacket. ‘And keep still.’

John sat down on one of the two chairs that stood in the middle of the otherwise empty room and, after some hesitation, Sherlock followed suit.

At that moment, the second door to the room was opened and they caught their first glimpse of one of their captors: a man, short hair – dark blond – stout figure, nondescript face.

‘Mr Holmes, Dr Watson! What a pleasure. How kind of you to honour us with your visit. Let me introduce myself: Moran, Sebastian Moran.’

John peered at Sherlock to gauge his reaction and saw a reflection of his own ignorance. But he also saw something that made him doubt this meeting was going to end well – the detective had wind of a game.

Moran smiled knowingly. Of course he would recognize someone of his kind, John thought.

‘You know, Mr Holmes, I was starting to worry. Jim …’ Moran made a dramatic pause as if to enjoy the name. ‘He was always so convinced of your abilities and yet I’ve been sitting here for two days, waiting. Our little explosives experiment at the hospital put you on the wrong track, just as I expected. One of the idiots working for Hoffner would surely make a mistake, that much also was clear. But why did it take so long for you to get here?’

He scrutinized them but didn’t seem to come to a conclusion. There was nothing on Sherlock’s face that betrayed any reaction; even when he started talking, his mouth barely moved.

‘Just get to the point, Mr … Moran.’

‘Certainly, I beg your pardon.’ Despite his words, Moran didn’t seem at all sorry and his smile had a familiar ring for John. Of course – it was Moriarty’s.

‘As you know, something very sad has happened. There was the slight possibility – and he nearly broke down laughing at the mere thought of it – that he had underestimated you. So he asked me to destroy all evidence and go into hiding in case he didn’t come back.’

Slowly pacing the room, Moran shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe what he was going to say now.

‘And when, some time later, I sat next to a pretty little heap of data and watched it go up in flames, then scattered all the ashes, I wondered what could possibly happen now that Jim was gone. The answer came quickly.’

In a flash, Moran took out a weapon, pointed it at Sherlock and pulled the trigger. So fast that John’s blood barely had time to freeze in his veins before it started flowing again with his realisation that the magazine was empty. Sherlock hadn’t even blinked.

‘Just like that heap of CDs and hard drives, everything …’ Moran hissed and scratched his head with the gun. ‘Everything Jim had built up disappeared. Slowly but surely, political friends ended up in prison, weapons were confiscated, money stopped flowing. Until there was nothing. Nothing!’

With the amount of gesticulating Moran was doing, John hoped the man’s weapon really was unloaded. But he seriously doubted it.

‘I told myself it was impossible,’ Moran continued. ‘Jim always thought of everything. Every conceivable step in a plan. And then there was this tiny report in the newspaper that made it all make sense: Sherlock Holmes was alive and, piece by piece, he had picked apart everything Jim had worked for. Sherlock Holmes was destroying Jim Moriarty’s masterpiece. His life’s work. Who would’ve thought …’

He leaned forwards, glaring at Sherlock from just a couple of inches away. ‘Isn’t it ironic that Jim wasn’t able to keep his promise and burn your heart out, but you did it yourself?’ He paused, studying the face in front of him. ‘How was it, those two years, all alone? Hiding, always on the run?’

‘Comfortably little distraction,’ Sherlock said dryly.

Moran straightened and gave a bitter laugh. ‘Moving on has its perks, doesn’t it?’

John could see the lines around Sherlock’s eyes imperceptibly tightening. Moran’s words made little sense to him, though John did figure out he was looking at one of the gunmen who had targeted them that night at the swimming pool.

The old John might have waited for a better opportunity to retaliate, but the new John simply wanted to punch that sadistic grin off Moran’s face.

‘What the fuck do you –?’

‘Dr Watson!’ Sherlock barked. It had been a little while since John had last heard Sherlock’s cutting voice directed at him. ‘Be quiet. This doesn’t concern you.’

John clenched his teeth but backed down. Not his game, it seemed.

‘Mr Holmes, your manners! I thought we were civilised,’ Moran remarked and smiled sardonically. ‘This is no way to treat your friend.’

‘He’s not important,’ Sherlock said through clenched teeth, causing Moran to raise an eyebrow.

‘There were times when I got a different impression.’

‘You should stop living in the past,’ Sherlock spat. ‘Now what do you want?’  

Moran looked disappointed with their verbal exchange.

‘Well, let’s get to business then,’ he said. ‘You’re right, you know, I’m definitely moving on, and that’s where you come in.’ He gave Sherlock a toothy grin. ‘After the mess you made, I decided that, if someone could rebuild Jim’s work, who better than the person who destroyed it. And violà, here you are, sufficiently motivated to carry out everything to my satisfaction.’

‘You must be joking,’ Sherlock sneered.

‘Now that’s the best part, you see,’ Moran continued unerringly. ‘If you two don’t start now and act according to my orders, Lestrade dies. If you succeed, he will be released; if I feel really generous, maybe the good doctor survives, too. If you fail or I see any indication of police involvement, though, you have to say bye-bye. Just like I’m doing now. Bye-bye.’

Moran started to retreat towards the door he had come through.

‘How do we know Lestrade is –?’ John blurted out.

‘Quiet!’ Sherlock hissed, but it was too late. Moran aimed the weapon at John.

‘The impudent little doctor,’ he growled. ‘If you weren’t useful, I would’ve neutralised you long ago.’ He turned towards Sherlock. ‘Expect my message.’

The door closed and they heard a key before Sherlock’s phone signalled a text.

‘We’ve been booked into a centrally located hotel, L’Esprit,’ Sherlock said after he’d glanced at the display. He stood up and strode towards the door. ‘Our luggage is already there. The first task is to find a weakness in the prefecture of the département Sète belongs to. The local sub-prefect, who’s pulling all the strings, has too much of a clean slate to put him under pressure. Now help me break this open.’

Sherlock threw himself against the wooden door but it didn’t budge.

‘Forget it, it’s massive,’ John said. ‘Good thing we left our equipment in the car, so Moran has the lock picks _and_ the weapon by now.’

‘They won’t touch anything and I’m pretty sure you’ll find the gun in your room.’ Sherlock rattled at the door. ‘We’re no threat to them, with or without the weapon. You know that.’

‘No, not really, but you seem to have a good idea of what makes those people tick. Not surprising, though.’

Sherlock didn’t acknowledge the statement as he felt along the small crack between the frame and the door.

‘That’s what you did, isn’t it?’ John went on. ‘In those two years, I mean. You searched them out to destroy Moriarty’s network.’

‘Mmh.’ Still no eye contact. John felt anger bubbling up in him.

‘Why didn’t you tell me, damn it?’ he exclaimed. The sudden outburst spurred Sherlock to action, and he whipped around to stare down John.

‘As I said. No concern of yours.’

‘But why –’

‘Listen, it’s of no relevance. You’ve got your own life now, and I … I have things to do.’

‘“Things to do”, what does that even mean?’ John asked. ‘God, Sherlock, this quest or whatever you were on is over, we’re here, together, we –’

‘Shut up,’ Sherlock whispered insistently. ‘It isn’t over, isn’t that clear? We’re right in the middle of it and I didn’t do all this just to have you ruin everything with …’ he scanned the room, his voice trailing off.

‘Ruin what?’

‘Nothing. Leave it alone. Now let’s try the windows.’

Sherlock smashed out a window’s glass and kicked open its shutters. John’s thoughts were effectively taken off their argument as he focused on avoiding breaking his neck. Clutching the drainpipe, he slid towards the safety of the pavement; by the time he had reached it unscathed, Sherlock had already produced his phone and begun searching. A moment later and they were following its lead towards a shabby Internet café on the way to the city centre.

During the next two hours, Sherlock scrolled through every article that mentioned the representative of the prefecture and looked at every picture that included him, even as a marginal figure. The photo with his family caught Sherlock’s interest for a moment, but then he clicked again. John was falling asleep when a shout woke him.

‘Ha! Wait for me in the hotel,’ Sherlock exclaimed and ran out of the café.

The browser window was still open and John looked at the man on the screen: young, maybe in his mid-twenties, hair dyed blond. A click back revealed a short biography – he was the secretary of the prefecture. What the hell was that supposed to mean? John frowned and, after looking up their hotel on a map, logged out of Sherlock’s browsing session.

He didn’t have to go very far to reach the hotel and the receptionist in the posh lobby immediately handed him the keys when he identified himself. John found that even more surprising when a glimpse at the lift’s mirrored walls showed him that he really did look as unkempt as he felt.

When Sherlock barged in John’s room a few hours later, the somewhat dishevelled camper who had left John behind at the Internet cafe had already been replaced by the more familiar man in a slick suit.

‘Young Monsieur Petit – what a fitting name – was really easy prey,’ Sherlock announced, bouncing on his toes.

‘The secretary?’ John felt compelled to ask.

‘Of course, who else? His flat is ideally situated, they really thought about everything. Underground parking with a direct entrance to the lift. Apartment opposite the lift’s door. No buildings on the other side of the street. Perfect.’

Mild irritation was all John could muster and, if it hadn’t been for Greg’s safety, he would’ve made Sherlock wait indefinitely. Instead, he sighed and resigned himself to his fate as the prompter.

‘And who is “they”?’

‘The sub-prefect and his secretary, of course.’

‘And who is our target and who, exactly, is it that wants him?’

Impatiently Sherlock seemed to ponder how much of the story he had to tell when the facts were perfectly obvious.

‘He’s _my_ prey. But for now I just have a telephone number. And a date in exactly 89 minutes. In the meantime, you need to learn how this camera works ...’ he held up a device the size of a dictaphone, sizing John up at the same time, ‘... and change into something more appropriate. You’re going out.’

***

One hour and twenty-nine minutes later, after a shower and a trip to the shops, John sat in a plush chair and felt caught up in the most bizarre case of déjà vu possible. He fiddled with the cuffs of his new white shirt while watching Sherlock ensnare a blond, although this time it was a man. To help himself separate this from the situation in Paris, John had ordered an aperitif, though it sat on his table, untouched.

The scene before him was just too bewilderingly identical to what he had already experienced: Sherlock’s gaze never left his target. His hands brushing past strategically vital body parts, but without being obtrusive. He threw his head back when he laughed and, with just the slightest change of posture, always managed to accentuate another detail of his physique.

John’s eyes were almost magnetically drawn to the tempting display, envy clawing at him with each deep look Sherlock gave the other man.

 _Get a grip,_ he told himself. _This is not the time for sentiment._

Wincing at his own use of Sherlock’s expression, he forcefully looked away to avoid attracting attention. The next minute, his mobile announced a text.

_Meet me at the exit. SH_

Glancing around, John didn’t see Sherlock anywhere and so he hurried towards the door. The crowd of people entering the club was pushing him back and, if it hadn’t been for the muttered apology, he wouldn’t have realised that Sherlock had slipped a bunch of keys into his pocket.

Hiding the camera in Petit’s bedroom was child’s play, and barely an hour later John arrived back at the bar. The place had become crowded and he leaned against a column as he scanned the throng of hip day-trippers from Marseille. Sherlock was somewhere in there but it would be impossible to find him; John resigned himself to waiting until he was pick-pocketed again.

It was hot and stuffy, but John decided the view of the seating area could provide some distraction while he waited. Feeling the old mechanisms being set in motion again, he allowed his deductions to flow. The guy to his right was surely telling his date that he was single, but that wasn’t the case. And if he thought she was his age, he also was in for a surprise.

The two women at the table were here for the first time, but they weren’t tourists. To their left was a man who looked like a pot dealer – but this was the Côte d’Azur, so cocaine was more likely. Now what about the two standing in one of the dark corners next to the bar?

John tried to focus, although a leaden heaviness in his stomach pulled him down. This was just an exercise in deduction, wasn’t it? Breathing in deeply, he tried to ignore his jealousy.

One of the men was young and obviously trying to please. Good-looking, hair with highlights, a slightly submissive smile. The other one was older, though it was impossible to tell by how much. Tall, with a posture as if he owned the place – but never too unattainable. Just like a fisherman, giving some line and then quickly pulling in his catch. Or a predator on the prowl.

John stopped. _Hadn’t those been Sherlock’s words? The bastard!_

Shaking his head at his own stupidity, John couldn’t suppress the urge to grin. For the first time since Sherlock’s reappearance, he didn’t feel like a blind man walking through a labyrinth anymore.

 _God, I’ve been such an idiot,_ he cursed himself. He had fallen prey to Sherlock just like the slimy git at the other end of the club. But, hell, it was such a relief to finally know what was going on.

Yet seeing Sherlock whispering something in Petit’s ear before he left to pick-pocket the key was still hard to endure. And the embrace that was supposed to mask the key’s return to Petit’s jacket resulted in clenched fists in John’s jacket all the same.

All that was negligible now, John noticed with no small amount of astonishment, and he didn’t flee the club but sat down at the bar to order a beer. After a diet of wine, water and coffee from a can, it was time to get back to normal, and that didn’t just mean a proper beverage but an infusion of sanity for all parts of his fucked up life at the moment – especially when that life could end quite soon.

Biting his lips, he tried to push away the thought that Moran seemed to intend to kill him no matter the outcome of their tasks. If that really were the case, there were a number of things he had to clarify, and not just for his own sake. Maybe the _new John_ would discover some traces of the _old Sherlock_ before it was too late.

Without hurry, John finished his beer and left the club, revelling in the warm spring air outside. The old buildings, tinged yellow in the street lights, calmed John and bolstered his courage enough that he hoped it would bring him through the night. He had to confront Sherlock; there was no way around it anymore. Most of all, he needed to shed the passive role Sherlock had forced on him – both in bed and out. One he had overcome before. The other, well, he wasn’t sure his limited experience with men – two months at an all-male boarding school – was enough to counter Sherlock’s sexual dominance, but he had to try.

 _I’m a grown man with a brain and a demanding career that I’m good at,_ he reminded himself inwardly. _I can do what I need to do to reclaim some control of my life._

Absorbed in thought, John was just about to enter the hotel’s lift when another passenger slipped past him.

‘Sherlock! You’re back already?’ John asked, trying to ignore the confident grin that answered him.

‘Unfortunately I have to go to Paris tomorrow _very early_. But I told him I’d return in a week and couldn’t wait to meet him again.’ Sherlock shrugged. ‘He was quite disappointed that I had to go. The man can’t be too busy; did you see how he threw himself at me?’

‘Ah … yes, I did.’ John breathed in deeply and managed a crooked smile before the lift stopped and the door opened.

‘Problem?’ Sherlock asked as they stepped into the hallway.

‘No, nothing,’ John managed in an almost normal voice. Before he could walk away towards his room, Sherlock grabbed his arm.

‘It’s … everything’s all right,’ John said and sighed.

Meeting Sherlock’s searching eyes, John attempted to brave his look, but the moment he saw the deduction dawning on Sherlock’s face, he tried to wrench free. This was not how it was supposed to happen! Sherlock bent down, his eyes boring into John’s.

‘Stop it!’ he hissed. ‘We’ve moved on and there’s no way back. Even you shouldn’t be too thick to understand that!’

A push sent John staggering back as Sherlock turned, walked quickly down the hallway towards his door, unlocked it and disappeared without another glance at John.

Glad he had managed to regain his balance without hitting the wall or the floor, John stood in the middle of the hall for a moment, stunned and struggling to calm himself.

It didn’t matter, he told himself. What had just happened didn’t matter because his decision from an hour ago still felt right – especially after that last outburst.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience, Batik, really.


	13. The liability

Some rituals John still remembered vividly from their time at Baker Street, so he gave Sherlock three minutes before he knocked.

The door opened but Sherlock had already disappeared into the bathroom again when John entered.

 _Of course he knew it was me,_ John thought. The rest also was like in the old days – too much contact with the outside world needed to be washed off as quickly as possible.

Scanning the room, John noticed with some satisfaction that it resembled his own; he switched off the overhead light and sat down in the tiny armchair next to the wardrobe. Now it was a bit too dark and he fumbled for the standard lamp’s switch to make the atmosphere less sombre.

 _I’m ready now,_ he thought. He rubbed his nose, combed through his hair and, finally, when he started squirming in the seat, accepted the possibility that he wasn’t prepared at all.

There was no reason to fret, he assured himself, because looking back, he had seen some promising signs that should lessen his anxiety, among them the fact that Sherlock had never again used the crude language of their first encounter. Until their meeting with Moran, stony silences that were just interrupted by harsh words also had become less. Instead, they talked – not about the sex, but still.

The shower stopped and John felt his heart beat against his ribs as Sherlock stepped into the room. John’s heart refused to slow, though; Sherlock in boxers and a T-shirt, wet curls like brushstrokes on his neck, only added a beat.

‘You’re still here,’ Sherlock said.

‘Of course.’ His voice sounded confident, so John concentrated on getting the slight trembling of his hands under control as well.

‘It’s not necessary. I just have to wait for Moran’s reaction and the next instruction.’

John gave Sherlock a small smile and relaxed into the chair, watching him as he opened the wardrobe and took out pyjama bottoms.

‘If you ask me, I don’t think it’s worth putting them on,’ John said, enjoying the expression of open confusion on Sherlock’s face.

‘No?’ he asked, eying the trousers and then John sceptically.

‘If I were you,’ John drawled. ‘I’d take off everything.’

‘Why should I?’ A dark look confirmed that Sherlock had finally smelled a rat.

‘Isn’t this how it works?’ John asked. He had to be quick now. ‘First, there’s some emotional upheaval, like that just now in the hallway, and then we fuck?’

Before he could have second thoughts, John stood up, took off his T-shirt and dropped it to the floor. By the time it hit the carpet, he could sense Sherlock getting ready to pounce. A hand grabbed his waistband before John had a chance to reach for Sherlock, but he got hold of Sherlock’s fingers to stop them from advancing.

‘That’s not the way I planned it,’ John said, starting to peel off the digits.

‘Planned?’

It was the sound of retreat. Alarmed that someone else was trying to make the rules, Sherlock took a step back. John knew he had to tread carefully.

‘Yes, I have a plan,’ he said calmly. As if he was dealing with a caged animal, he slowly pulled up Sherlock’s T-shirt. Reluctantly, Sherlock moved his arms and allowed John to remove the garment.

‘And if you do what I tell you, you’ll find out about it soon enough. Or you can bid me goodnight and the whole thing will forever remain a mystery.’

Sherlock wasn’t the only one who could cast a fishing rod, John thought, but a furious look and a set jaw told him that his catch was still struggling with the bait.

‘What’s the plan?’ _And, hooked_ _!_

John snaked his fingers under the waistband of Sherlock’s boxers before abruptly stopping. Everything was becoming too _real_ all of a sudden and John took that moment to pull himself together. It was impossible to back down now.

‘You …’ John’s voice caught and he cleared his throat. ‘One thing should be clear: You have to stick to the rules for a change.’

John gave his fingers permission to move again and, after an insistent pull, Sherlock’s boxers were pooling around his feet. John immediately started pushing him backwards, fixing him with his gaze.

‘And you’ll listen to me, however improbable that may sound to you at the moment.’

To John’s surprise, Sherlock let himself be guided the three steps to the bed and, when the backs of his legs made contact with the mattress, sat down.

‘Your hands will only touch the bed and nothing else,’ John said with more authority than he felt, especially when Sherlock’s answer – a withering glare – nearly broke his resolve. But there was no open resistance, and that was more affirmation than he’d expected, John thought.

He breathed in deeply and knelt between Sherlock’s legs, letting his hands slowly glide up lean thighs as he simultaneously weighed his words cautiously.

‘I’m sure your looks and your charm and all the rest of it was very helpful with … what you were doing in those two years. It provided you with important information or opened a lot of doors –’ John shook his head unbelievingly. ‘Hell, I’ve seen that often enough.’

After his hands had reached hip bones, John let them remain there and looked up at Sherlock. Just like his rigid body, Sherlock’s face didn’t betray any emotion and John struggled with himself, torn between wanting nothing more than to continue his explorations and being more than a bit intimidated by Sherlock’s stony facade.

‘And when you said you did what had been necessary, I didn’t understand at first, but tonight I did. Don’t get me wrong, I’d never judge you, because I’m sure it was your most effective weapon.’

John smirked unwittingly and allowed his mouth to curve into a real smile.

‘But this is over now, do you hear me? You’ll stop using sex to keep me at arm’s length. I’m not your prey and you won’t accomplish anything – not even silencing me – with a quick fuck. There are things we have to _talk_ about!’

The words didn’t turn Sherlock’s stony expression into something more approachable and even the smile wasn’t working. John sighed. He’d try once again and, if that also failed, he didn’t know how to go on. Maybe he had been mistaken and there was really no way to reach Sherlock anymore.

‘You’re right, there is no way back to what we were. So what? I don’t see any reason why we should attempt that because I finally have ... what I want.’

The conviction in his own voice surprised even John, but a slight quirk of Sherlock’s eyebrow told him that he had torn down at least one of the outer walls. The other fortifications needed a different kind of attack, John reckoned, and it was time to give Sherlock a taste of his own medicine.

Letting his hands gently travel up and down Sherlock’s thighs, John studied Sherlock’s penis. Despite Sherlock’s apparent displeasure with their one-sided talk, this part of his body seemed at least mildly interested in the proceedings.

John took Sherlock in hand and slowly pushed back his foreskin. Men tended to suppress their physical reactions during medical exams and John took a moment to process Sherlock’s moan and the rapid hardening his touch produced this time.

It was probably a result of his profession, but he had never really thought about the fantastic achievement of nature that was the male phallus. Instead of the slight curve many of them had when hard, Sherlock’s was straight and now almost perfectly upright. John moved Sherlock’s foreskin over the tip again, just  to feel the spongy body fill with blood.

The form was so very organic, and the texture … from his own experience he could describe it, but fingers were limited in their perceptions. John bowed a little and felt the glans with his tongue. Firm, but flexible, almost completely smooth but nevertheless complex in form.

Fascinated, he traced the rim; he was still considering how to categorize the taste when a new component appeared. Saltier, stronger.

Licking off the pre-ejaculate, John briefly considered what he liked about a blowjob and decided to give it a try. Grabbing Sherlock’s shaft with one hand, he let the tip of his cock slide between his lips. A little pressure, more saliva, a slight vacuum – and Sherlock landed on the bed with a thud, unwilling – or unable – to sit upright anymore.

A boneless heap of helpless lust and wordless desire for more, Sherlock jerked up into the grip of John’s hand as John tried to coordinate the movements of his hand and his mouth to establish a regular rhythm. When he had achieved that, Sherlock quickly lost his last shred of control.

‘I …’ he panted, but John didn’t need the verbal warning; the tremor of Sherlock’s approaching orgasm was warning enough. Ignoring the persistent pushing of Sherlock’s hands, he sucked vigorously, pumping the shaft hard and fast; moments later, Sherlock’s trembling thighs stilled as he emptied himself in John’s mouth.

But John was ready. He thought about the rather small amount of liquid that was released during ejaculation, compared it to the taste of Sherlock’s pre-ejaculate and swallowed – briefly cataloguing the amino acids.

Earlier that night, when he had been sitting at the bar, he had not been entirely convinced that his plan was a good idea. But looking at Sherlock now, his face and body completely relaxed, eased John’s doubts. He had done that; he was the reason why Sherlock’s ribcage was working so hard to allow more air into his lungs.

Getting up from his knees, John opened his fly and freed his almost painful erection. When he sat down next to Sherlock, a hand immediately encircled his cock, but John batted it away.

‘Just enjoy. This has nothing to do with your game plan,’ he said, his mind rewinding to replay the feel of Sherlock’s cock in his mouth.

Truly having Sherlock’s eyes on him – knowing Sherlock was observing every move of his hand over his shaft and every reaction of his body – was more arousing than John had anticipated. As unbelievably hot as that was, however, in the end it was the residual taste of Sherlock on his tongue that gave John his final incentive to let go.

He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to cope with the massive rush of sensations seizing his entire system as he came. Gasping for air, he rode out the shocks as quickly as he could, forcing his hand away from his cock before the last subtle jerks of his hips had subsided.

He needed to see Sherlock’s face, but when he opened his eyes, he felt lost somehow. Sherlock’s expression was calm, unflinching, inscrutable as ever; he didn’t even blink when John gave him a tiny smile. John couldn’t even be sure he wouldn’t be thrown out and, before he could find out, a well-known sound announced a quick succession of text messages.

Sherlock remained where he was for a moment – just a fraction of a second – as if he was unwilling to break whatever spell was engulfing them. Then he jumped up, grabbed his boxers and rushed to the table to unlock his mobile.

Another moment and Sherlock’s rage snapped John out of his daze.

‘How am I supposed to see anything in that?’

Whatever the message was, it obviously infuriated Sherlock and he raised his hand as if to smash the phone before thinking better of the idea. John went over to him and managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of a picture. It showed Greg in front of a wall covered with a white sheet, nothing else.

‘He seems to be all right, though,’ John remarked.

‘What? … Yes, yes, of course.’ Sherlock stepped into his boxers. ‘But there’s nothing, no reflections, no floor … it’s … augh!’

John thought he had never seen Sherlock so frustrated, not even that time when they had only pet bunnies to investigate.

‘And what did Moran write about our next step?’

Sherlock zoomed in and out, turning his smartphone alternately sideways and upright.

‘Mmh … what? Yes … our job is to eliminate Moran’s competition in the drug trade around here. He wants us to get rid of the local mafia.’

‘If nothing else,’ John answered with dry sarcasm, expecting some kind of retort that set their usual pattern of deductions in motion.

‘You should get some sleep. In your room. I’ll wake you when I need you.’

John observed Sherlock pacing up and down the room, cursing under his breath. Had the instruction been a dismissal? A sign of concern?

While he was slowly dressing, John decided it was the latter – chose to believe it was the latter – because although he had no doubt Sherlock wasn’t even aware that he was still in the room at this point, that last encounter had to mean, well, _something_.

Once dressed, John went to his room and closed the door behind him, the conviction that he had been able to establish a connection with Sherlock already starting to weaken. Expecting to spend the night tossing and turning, John went to bed, yet the moment he made contact with the mattress, profound relaxation coursed through him – after the past few nights of sleeping on the ground, this was pure bliss.

When he opened his eyes in the morning, John was briefly disoriented by the smell of the sheets and the unusual quietness, before reality crashed down on him quickly enough. Reluctantly, he got up. They had to go up against the mob, so he should at least shower.

Going through the motions, John managed to achieve a state of relative wakefulness by the time he was dressed. His stomach rumbled an unequivocal command for him to get his hands on something to eat. Maybe when Sherlock showed up …

John winced. He didn’t want to think about how awkward Sherlock’s arrival might be. John had given the first blowjob of his life to Sherlock – and then masturbated in front of him – just to be completely ignored afterwards. Things hadn’t exactly worked out as he had planned, but perhaps Sherlock had at least listened to him. Surely something would be different, even if …

A knock forced John from his musings.

‘Door’s open.’

The moment Sherlock strode into the room, John knew nothing was different.

‘This is your target,’ Sherlock said without salute as he typed something into his phone. ‘He has a small car repair shop, here’s the address.’

John’s mobile beeped where it was recharging on the night stand and he went to retrieve it.

‘I have little information,’ Sherlock went on. ‘All I know is that he’s active on the periphery of the organisation.’

‘And what am I to do?’ John asked.

‘Keep an eye on him. We’ll meet again tonight. Expect my message.’

And that was it. As quickly as Sherlock had entered, he vanished again, leaving John standing in the middle of his room, dumbstruck.

 _Expect my message. That wanker!_ he cursed silently _._ Sherlock had definitely spent too much time with that kind of people – he was already talking like them.

Slightly on edge, John donned his cap and left the room. Leaving the hotel and heading toward his target, he stopped long enough to buy breakfast and a newspaper at a café before positioning himself around the corner from the auto repair shop. He could see well through the shop’s plate-glass window, and it quickly became clear that the shop owner was barely doing anything. John saw him briefly talking to a young bloke about one of the cars but, otherwise, he just sat behind the counter, reading a newspaper of his own.

 _Perfect_. John clenched his teeth against his frustration. Instead of contributing something useful, he was standing on a street corner – one hand sticky with pastry, a newspaper he didn’t understand in the other – with little to do beyond thinking about how Sherlock seemed to have disregarded everything  they had done the night before.

Feeling a rather vicious headache forming, John desperately wished for a coffee. Damn, he was so sick and tired of all of this. If it went on like it was for too much longer, it would drive him nuts, it would … John paused, focusing his whirling thoughts.

 _No, it wouldn’t. Because it simply wouldn’t go on like that. It couldn’t._ The paper bag crumpling in his hand was telling enough – he had to put a stop to this once and for all. The next time Sherlock chose to dish out something, he wouldn’t let himself be bullied into complying. There was no use telling Sherlock that it was him John wanted when a setback like being ignored after sex bothered him that much. He should be used to Sherlock’s attitudes and reactions by now.

Despite his resolve, John nevertheless worked himself into an increasing state of annoyance over the uneventful afternoon, worsened by the fact that the only thing his target did was pop out to the bar down the street for a drink every few hours. If there was anything wrong with him, perhaps it was the fact that he had a serious alcohol problem.

It was sundown when the long-awaited message from Sherlock arrived, showing John the coordinates of a little park. Anticipating the meeting as much as dreading it, he tried to remain calm, in large part because Sherlock would most likely be completely absorbed in the case anyway. John was still a good distance from their rendevous point when he spotted Sherlock pacing. As he neared, he also could hear Sherlock muttering to himself.

Exhausted, John sat down on one of the nearby wooden benches.

‘Anything?’ Sherlock asked, never breaking stride in his pacing.

 _He has at least acknowledged my presence,_ John thought bitterly. Quite a feat.

‘That’s where he went and this is who he met.’

John handed him the mobile, leaving it to Sherlock to scroll through the pictures.

‘No, nothing, irrelevant.’

Sherlock carelessly dropped the phone into John’s lap.

‘I’ve got to get closer to the centre,’ Sherlock explained, directing his words more toward the patch of grass next to them than to John. ‘That useless idiot had absolutely nothing of interest in his wallet, except maybe …’

He pulled the leather wallet out of his pocket and emptied it on the ground. In the dusky light, he couldn’t see much and used his smartphone to illuminate his treasure.

‘Look at that. What have we here?’ Sherlock nudged a finger through the small pile of debris before picking out a small round object and showing it to John. Its size and shape closely resembled a coin but, instead, it was some kind of token. ‘I saw Petit get a similar one when he handed in his jacket at the cloakroom.’

He turned the little metal disc.

‘Club Kiev ...’ he read. ‘That’s it! I’ve got to go. Wait for me at the hotel.’

That was the clue. John jumped up, grabbed the arm of Sherlock’s jacket with all his might and abruptly stalled Sherlock’s forward movement.

‘What?’ That cutting voice could have severed his offending fingers, but John didn’t retreat.

‘You’re not going to do this alone again, do you hear me? I’ll do whatever you say – except wait alone.’

John hoped he had sounded convincing enough, but a look at Sherlock’s face told him that he had failed miserably. How he hated that pitying smile!

‘It makes a lot more sense if you stay at the hotel. You cannot be of any use to me at the moment.’

‘Not of any use?’ John shouted, grabbing Sherlock’s jacket with both hands and shaking Sherlock furiously. ‘You’re fucking kidding me, aren’t you? Why do you start with that all over again? I thought we had an agreement?’

The weak lamps in the park prevented John from seeing Sherlock’s expression, but his physical reaction was telling enough. Forcefully, he wrested himself free from John and took two steps backwards.

‘I cannot allow for any liabilities,’ Sherlock said, smoothing down his jacket.

John watched the act before him with incredulous anger. He could practically see the walls forming around Sherlock, his aloof look and rigid posture, and it infuriated John to a degree he had not thought possible.

Calculating that he only had a chance from a lower angle, he rushed forwards, clutched Sherlock’s legs and knocked him down. John’s hands collided painfully with the gravel, but the body under him had surely landed harder.

Knowing he had to be quick if he wanted to keep the upper hand, John tried to get into an upright position, but it was too late. Forced to engage in a proper fight with his taller opponent, John hoped the amount of adrenalin in his blood would at least allow him to say something before Sherlock threw him off.

‘Is that it? What’s between us? … A liability?’

John tried his best to keep Sherlock pinned down, even as he fought those efforts unceasingly, attempting to weaken John’s grip. The moment his strength waned, Sherlock shoved him away and another push ensured that John landed face first in the gravel.

‘That’s what you’re always going to be,’ Sherlock ground out through clenched teeth.

John hesitantly followed his instinct to get up. He didn’t particularly care to see Sherlock in that moment. Instead he observed the tiny stones on the path and felt for their impressions in his cheek.

‘That’s it then.’ It should have been a question, but John couldn’t make it sound like one.

‘Yes,’ Sherlock said, his body only steps away from John but his voice too far away to bridge the gap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... and three cheers for Batik the language charmer.


	14. The blank space

John’s dulled senses had barely been able to guide him back to the hotel, leading him through dark alleys and crowded precincts instead. When he finally arrived in his room, he just stood in the middle of it, feeling lost. For the sake of doing something, he started packing, but then stopped. Moran had said Sherlock and he should be working on the jobs together, so even though Sherlock had no use for him, he should at least _be there_.

So he sat by the window and stared outside, the few coloured strip lights slowly forming dancing dots behind his blinking eyelids; when the day started dawning, he hadn’t slept at all.

Exhausted, he dragged himself up. There had to be something he could do, it didn’t matter what, he wouldn’t just sit around and wait for a message.

After staggering down to the lobby, John accepted the fact that he was too tired to walk far and hailed a taxi. Gesticulating wildly, he tried to explain to the driver that he should just drive, without a destination, and after what seemed like ages, the man understood him.

John slumped in the back seat. The car’s back windows were dirty, but they wouldn’t have let in much light anyway since the sun still wasn’t bright enough to break through the slightly misty air. It all amounted to an unbearably blurred view, made worse by the sense of constant panic wearing John down. Why did it always end like that? Always? _Wait a second …_

‘Shit!’ John blurted. ‘I’m such an idiot, shit, I –!’

The driver turned his head, trying to find out if he was saddled with a lunatic, and John quickly apologized. Balled fists and clenched teeth had to be enough if he wanted to continue the ride, but they were insufficient to express his rage.

A bit more than two years ago, he had felt exactly like that – panicked and unable to form a coherent thought after checking on Mrs Hudson – the completely unharmed Mrs Hudson.

And now he had fallen into the same trap again.

‘Return … à l’hôtel, please,’ John told the driver.

When he arrived, John leapt from the taxi and stomped upstairs, too impatient to wait for the lift. Unlike two years ago, facing Sherlock this time didn’t mean going to a cemetery and talking to a piece of black granite.

Yet every step he took down the hallway slowed his pace and, as he finally arrived at Sherlock’s door, John couldn’t help being overcome with the same desperate feeling that had accompanied him when he had bid goodbye at the tombstone.

 _Let him be here,_ he prayed insistently and knocked.

Nothing. John’s heart fell. Sherlock _had_ to be there. He wouldn’t just disappear again without another word, would he?

An hour later, standing in front of the same door again, John wasn’t so sure about that anymore, and the hour after that, he had to violently reject the thought that he should face the inevitable.

Sherlock would return. He always had.

As the day wore on, John gradually established a rhythm of visiting the door to Sherlock’s room every other hour and almost continuously checking his mobile in case a message hadn’t been directly pushed on to it. That night, he managed to sleep for short intervals full of nightmares, only to be awakened by ambulance sirens or his regular alarms.

The next day, there was still no sign of Sherlock.

Unsure of what to do, John read the local papers and watched TV, hours and hours of French chitchat or news, most of which didn’t make the slightest sense to him. Barely eating and completely sleep deprived, he dragged himself through the day. Once he tried to leave the hotel but turned on his heels at the threshold, just to be equally afraid when he again went to Sherlock’s door.

If it hadn’t been for Moran’s warning, John would have called Mycroft long ago; when the fourth day had passed, he started considering it anyway.

Contemplating his mobile, he sat on his bed. The TV was showing an inane talk show on the local station. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw red letters flashing on the screen, the programme had obviously been interrupted by a news broadcast. He switched on the sound and, with some effort, deciphered several of the words displayed below the reporter.

_There had been a shooting._

Scrambling upright, John turned up the volume and listened, frantically searching for words he could understand.

A raid. On the gendarmerie, it seemed, although John first doubted his impression. From what he pieced together, a sizeable part of the city’s organised crime had tried to break into the police’s drug storage facility but were captured in an extremely violent campaign.

John’s blood ran cold. The report said there had been casualties during the attack, at least two of the criminals were shot. Panicked, he looked at his watch: It was 6 pm and an hour ago Sherlock hadn’t been in his room.

What would it mean if he went up there and knocked but no one answered? Could it be that there was no difference between two years ago and now?

John bolted for the door. Running down the hallway, he collided with a maid, scattering the linen she had been carrying but continuing on without stopping to help her pick them up. Only when he was facing the oak veneer of Sherlock’s door did he hesitate. What if ...?

John raised a shaking hand to knock; the moment his knuckles made contact with the door, it was flung open.

Inside the room, Sherlock started to rant and John was sure he had never heard a more beautiful sound.

‘What infernal one-track mind would even consider anything like that? Are there only mentally challenged idiots in this world?’

Inhaling, John entered and saw Sherlock throw his phone on the bed – it had obviously been the bearer of some highly unwelcome news. But getting rid of the offending gadget wasn’t enough to stem Sherlock’s anger and he began pacing the room, its size considerably limiting his range.

John smiled and closed the door. All of it was so reassuringly familiar.

‘How am I supposed to …? What can I …?’ Sherlock stopped and looked at John, a dozen different expressions flitting over his face until he settled for a distanced annoyance – as if they met for the first time but he wasn’t in the least interested in being introduced to John.

‘What do you want? How did you get in here?’

 _Oh, yes, that definitely sounds familiar,_ John conceded and this time wished for the opposite.

‘You opened the door to me.’

‘Did I?’ A flash of genuine surprise appeared on Sherlock’s face, vanishing just as quickly. ‘Irrelevant, I can’t bother with you at the moment.’

There was no inflection in Sherlock’s voice and his forbidding posture heralded a verbal request to leave that John was sure would follow. After four days, that was all Sherlock had to say. John breathed in, quelling the anger almost choking him.

_I won’t just take it this time, I won’t, I …_

‘I know what you did!’ he shouted. ‘You manipulated me – _again!_ Why do you keep ... doing that?’

Narrowing his eyes to slits, Sherlock took away any possibility that John would see anything but apparent disdain in his face.

‘I kept you safe, that’s all that matters,’ he said. ‘You obviously don’t get what’s at stake here.’

‘I don’t get …?’ John inhaled again, pressing his hands to his temples to avoid what felt like the imminent explosion of his head. ‘How dare you think –?’

‘That’s enough!’ Sherlock cut him short. ‘We let ourselves get carried away, nothing else. I apologise for my weakness, if that’s what you want.’

‘Of course that’s not what I want,’ John exclaimed.

‘Well, suit yourself, _doctor_.’

Doctor? John blinked, the rest of his body remaining paralysed. It couldn’t be true. Sherlock wouldn’t dare to shut him out again, not after everything.

Staring at Sherlock in disbelief, John gradually came to realise that it was indeed happening. Right now. It would start all over again. Just like in the morgue, during their first meeting, or the two years Sherlock had spent dismantling Moriarty’s syndicate, forgetting everything and everyone else, single-mindedly focused on his task.

‘I won’t allow it, do you hear me?’ John croaked.

Sherlock furrowed his brows.

‘You won’t delete it … us,’ John whispered. He straightened and cleared his throat. ‘You won’t.’

The last look before Sherlock turned around told him unmistakably that there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Sherlock took three steps to the window and remained there, staring outside and leaving John looking at his back.

‘Sherlock, talk to me,’ John began, cutting off to compress his lips in frustration. It was pointless, thinking Sherlock might actually _communicate_. Well, he’d do the talking then because this time it wouldn’t end like two years ago.

‘You decided to dump me like one of your failed experiments, did you? Fine, I won’t waste your valuable time anymore,’ he continued, wondering how Sherlock could always talk so coldly without his blood freezing in his veins. The figure at the window didn’t move, though, so John shortened the distance a little.

‘But you still owe me something.’

Sherlock snorted almost imperceptibly.

‘I don’t think so,’ he growled.

‘Oh, yes, you do.’ John took another step and was now directly facing that intimidating back. ‘This time I want a real goodbye, not some babble on the mobile. You owe me that.’

‘I don’t owe you anything,’ Sherlock said and turned, the coldness in his eyes making John shiver. ‘I did my share. I kept you safe.’

‘But that’s not what I want,’ John said.

‘It’s all I can do. And not even that is enough. Are you blind? When I’m around, you ...’ He stopped, seeming to collect himself. ‘Leave. It. Alone,’ he snarled.

‘Listen to me.’ John could only hope that Sherlock was, indeed, listening to him, because the man’s stony expression offered no betraying reaction – not even a fleeting trace of self-consciousness. ‘All I want is a proper kiss, one that doesn’t involve teeth.’

He poked his index finger into Sherlock’s pectoral and, going by the look on Sherlock’s face, his assessment of John had just changed from _annoying_ to _revolting_.

‘I’m waiting,’ John said matter-of-factly; Sherlock didn’t bat an eyelid.

‘You’re being ridiculous.’

‘Not really. I’m giving you a chance to rid yourself of me with a simple kiss. Then you can move on. Doesn’t that sound appealing?’

It obviously did, because Sherlock suddenly came to life. As quickly as their lips touched, though, the kiss was over, Sherlock having lingered barely a fraction longer than had been absolutely necessary.

‘That was it?’ John asked critically.

‘This is really not the time for – ‘

‘I understand,’ John interrupted him. ‘And really, if that was all you could muster, then it might be better to end it.’

Sherlock scrunched up his nose.

‘Oh, please! Such an act is beneath even your standards,’ he scoffed.

‘I don’t care what you think of it,’ John hissed. ‘I demand a proper kiss, do you hear me? I’ve earned it!’

John unflinchingly held the gaze being directed at him. If this was the end, he’d meet it with his eyes open; and because he hardly even blinked, he saw the exact moment when it happened, the very instant those eyes thawed and the hard gleam in them disappeared. John pulled Sherlock down, not by the collar of his shirt but by the slightest pressure at the back of the neck. When Sherlock relented, it was the first time that John didn’t feel like brittle clay crumbling in the variable climate of Sherlock’s personality.

The slight inclination of Sherlock’s head, a gentle embrace around his waist, a hand slowly migrating up his spine – they all compensated John for the various painful collisions he’d had with tiles and stones. Feeling that mouth unhurried and soft erased all of the snide comments in one fell swoop. It was so new, so good and it wasn’t enough.

How different their first encounters could have been if that strong tongue had made use of its skills as it did now – demanding entrance, but not aggressively, playful in its dance with John’s. Or if those lips had cautiously nipped at John’s before moving on to find new ground for experimentation.

Overcome with the need to feel and touch, John’s hands grabbed Sherlock’s hair and his mouth deepened the kiss. He needed more, wanted to become delirious with it, feel every inch of Sherlock’s body, the hardness against his crotch …

‘I think it’s necessary …’ John panted and hoped that Sherlock had the willpower to put his suggestion into practice, ‘to stop now to make it count.’

Dutifully, Sherlock turned away, but he didn’t give up his hold on John.

‘John, you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into ...’ he began reluctantly. ‘I’ve … changed.’

‘So have I. I told you, I don’t care.’

‘But you’re not safe with me.’

‘When have I ever been safe?’

Resting his head on Sherlock’s shoulder, John decided _there_ was the perfect place to be, with Sherlock’s face pressing against his temple and the puff of his breath in his hair. He could have stayed like that forever, melting in the embrace, listening to Sherlock’s voice.

‘I have to think,’ Sherlock said, ending the caress to take a tentative step backwards.

‘Can I help?’

‘No, not yet.’

Then Sherlock was gone – his warmth as much as his mental presence. He shuffled towards the bed, sat down and buried his head in his hands.

‘You know where to find me,’ John said. He opened the door a crack, but then hesitated. ‘I believe in you,’ he whispered and left.

In the corridor, John fought the urge to head back into the room straightaway. There was no use though, Sherlock would be unreachable for the rest of the night, and no matter how improbable it seemed, he would find a way to save them all. There was no other option.

Repeating his last words to Sherlock in his head over and over again, John calmed himself down to a certain degree, but sleep was nevertheless elusive for most of the night. Even a cold shower couldn’t really revive him when he got up early the next morning and still groggy, he left the bathroom.

‘Morning.’

Alarmed, John whipped around.

‘Bloody hell, Sherlock!’ he shouted, givng up on squaring off – in nothing but a towel he wasn’t such a formidable sight anyway. ‘That you’re _able_ to do it doesn’t mean that you _have_ to open every locked door.’ Unable to read Sherlock’s inscrutable face, he gave up the attempt at lightening the mood. ‘Did you find a solution?’ he asked, expectantly.

Even in the weak light of dawn, John could see the trace of guilt on Sherlock’s face.

‘Not a satisfying one.’

‘But you’re here because …?’ John started, raising a questioning eyebrow.

‘I’m lacking some details.’

‘After a night of thinking, you haven’t turned everything inside out? How’s –’

‘Not those details.’ Sherlock took a step forward and John felt … studied; Sherlock pinned him with an intense gaze and never broke eye contact with John. ‘You were right, it was time to delete some things.’

Baffled by those piercing eyes, John barely realised that Sherlock had reached a hand towards him until it had snaked around his neck and rested at his nape.

‘What?’ he breathed.

‘Citric acid cycle,’ Sherlock murmured, pausing to bridge the remaining gap between them and feel a gentle path with his lips along John’s mouth. ‘Nursery rhymes.’

‘Why those?’

‘Superfluous. There’s something better.’

 _My space in the mind palace,_ John thought with a smile. And not just a hidden corner somewhere. No, John was sure it was at least a good-size room Sherlock had cleared out for him because, after his towel had become a tripping hazard on the floor and he was pushed to the bed, Sherlock’s hands and tongue did their utmost to map his body with excessive accuracy.

Sherlock catalogued the valley of John’s ear and the hidden depths of his mouth, every tooth, every crease of his lips. His hand caressed an arm before his tongue taught John about the sensitivity of the skin at its crook. But all of it paled in contrast to the shocks Sherlock’s palms sent out in their wake and the tantalisingly indecent sight of Sherlock tasting John’s index finger with his tongue.

 _Naked!_ He had to get Sherlock naked now!

Impatiently he waited until Sherlock was done exploring the fingers. He needed to put them to better use, like undoing the buttons of Sherlock’s shirt or opening a fly. When Sherlock’s interest was finally directed to something else – the indentation above John’s clavicle consuming all his attention – the possibility to strip him of his clothes opened up before John. Sherlock didn’t even seem to notice, he just curiously licked a path to the two dark pink isles on John’s chest while John was still fighting off Sherlock’s trousers.

‘A little help here–’

 _Damn the trousers!_ John’s mind screamed when sharp teeth bit lightly. The medical part of John’s brain was briefly amazed by the direct link between the pleasant pain in his chest and his crotch. Its tingling and Sherlock’s simultaneous caress of the other nub with gentle fingertips made scientific analysis impossible, as did the sudden alignment of their bodies.

John gasped. His and Sherlock’s movements slowly rubbed their cocks against each other and, as if Sherlock had waited for that sound, he lay his head on John’s chest to listen. He let the frantic beating of John’s heart thump against his ear and John could feel Sherlock’s smile against his skin. It even broadened at John’s feeble protest when Sherlock’s hand moved down his side, triggering a tickle.

A pinch of flesh to test his reaction, the brush of curls on his chest – John couldn’t work up much attention to what was going on, because his focus was increasingly captured by the rubbing of his dick against Sherlock’s abdomen.

Peripherally John realised that something must have coaxed Sherlock’s concentration away from the sound of his heartbeat. The downward trail of John’s increasingly coarser belly hair appeared to grab Sherlock’s interest as he followed it to the navel, but just before Sherlock’s mouth arrived where John expected – hoped – it would, Sherlock changed course.

‘Please,’ John heard himself beg, yet neither Sherlock’s mouth nor his hands took pity and went where John desperately needed them to touch him. Instead Sherlock pushed at his hips, insisting that John roll onto his side and then on his stomach. John relented and was instantly rewarded by Sherlock exploiting the new position to access even more of John’s body’s valleys and hills, his tongue advancing to new levels of intimacy that made John blush. He gave silent thanks for the shower he’d just had.

‘Damn Sherlock, for someone who wears gloves all the time, you’re … _fuck!_ ’

Sherlock’s tongue had been replaced by a slick finger and he quickly proved he had read the appropriate pages of an anatomy atlas as he easily brushed John’s prostate while sliding his body back up along John’s.

‘I need more data. All the data I can collect,’ he growled and then ran his tongue up John’s neck, along his earlobe to his hairline.

John inhaled. It was too much and _not enough_ – Sherlock’s mouth on his skin, long fingers of one hand on John’s cock as second and third fingers of the other hand joined the first in stretching his entrance. Entirely too many nerve endings were shooting forth information at the same time, and unable to cope with the incessant firing, John’s brain was shutting down.

Pushed to the edges of his limits, he felt his body being flooded with arousal when Sherlock withdrew his fingers and the tip of his cock breached the outer ring of John’s muscles. Sherlock slowly and carefully pushed farther, until a flash of pain momentarily overrode John’s pleasure. John froze. Consciously relaxing, he tried to get used to the sensation of fullness as Sherlock eased out and began his advance again.

 _He knows what he’s doing, he’ll make it better –_ and then all thoughts fled John’s mind as Sherlock slid back in and struck just _there_.

‘Shit, yes,’ John hissed. His body acted on its own, instinctively pushing back in hopes of gaining more of the glorious contact. Sherlock could catalogue every part of him inside and out if it meant there would be more of _that_.

Wantonly he handed himself over to Sherlock’s now firm, sure strokes, doing his part to make sure he felt each as deeply as possible. By the time Sherlock’s skillful fingers wrapped around his cock again, the sensation triggered a wildfire that threatened to leave John more than a bit scorched around his edges. He climaxed, Sherlock’s name a poorly stifled moan on his lips.

Still unable to think clearly and gripped by a weak-limbed feeling of utter satisfaction, John forced himself to remain on his knees for Sherlock. It wasn’t as hard as he had expected, because the strokes had slowed almost to a standstill.

John could tell from the pressure of the fingers on his hips the strain Sherlock was under as he tried to hold back – and the relief when he allowed himself to come. Minute movements and a deeply contented moan were diametrically opposed to everything Sherlock had allowed to show during their past sexual encounters, and John wished fervently that he could see Sherlock’s face.

Pulling John down with him, Sherlock collapsed on the mattress. A slight shift and their contact was broken, prompting John to glance at the other man – just to be sure.

He could tell from the look on Sherlock’s face that it – the room in the mind palace that contained everything about John – was still there. Somewhere among the phenomenal faculties of Sherlock’s mind, those boundlessly racing thoughts, there was a place devoted to him. At last.

John quirked a tender smile, resisting the urge to comb through the sweaty curls behind Sherlock’s ear.

‘I’m not sure how relevant that was with regard to our most pressing problem,’ John teased him gently.

‘Very relevant.’

Then Sherlock gave him a long look, one that had nothing of the exhausted ease of a moment ago. Seemingly unable to hide his distress, the worry manifesting in Sherlock’s features first irritated and then alarmed John to such a degree that his whole system had already switched to panic mode before the confirmation came.

‘John … I’m sorry to tell you, but you have to die.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To my beta Batik, who 'tweaked' until last year's sex didn't read like a half-finished puzzle any more. Thanks!


	15. The heart

John inched closer to the window and peeked through the glass.

_I could go outside now._

Instead, he retreated to his position next to the lobby’s main door and away from the window. No, it was still too early and a check on his watch confirmed his assessment.

He should wait. At least another minute or two.

Shuffling on his feet, he watched an overweight family with two whining kids squeeze through the entrance. Normal. Everything was perfectly normal this morning. The elderly lady and her fox terrier, the businessman’s phone that rang too loudly …

John automatically reached for his own mobile, hesitating for a moment before activating the display.

Still no text.

 _Of course there’s none,_ John thought. He hadn’t really expected a reply to the message he had sent mere minutes after Sherlock’s last departure this morning.

Something had been missing.

Sherlock’s goodbye on the threshold to his room had been so uncharacteristically calm that John couldn’t shake the impression that something important needed to be said. More than just a casual ‘Till later’.

Especially after those first hours of the day.

John studied the carpeted path near his feet. Stepping onto it and following it would lead him out of the building. Then there would be no doubt anymore that this was reality and not the sweaty, exhausted madness he had experienced earlier. Upon his first step outside, the soft morning sun that had filtered through the curtains of his room would make way for a sweltering garishness that brightened everything almost painfully.

John checked his mobile again.

 _No, there’s no proof,_ he thought gloomily. Not a single word that would serve as a reminder of this completely surreal morning. Something that would connect Sherlock’s curiously probing tongue and wandering hands of five hours ago to John’s current solitude.

Clearing his throat, John took a step towards the carpet guiding him over the threshold. There was no use in mulling those things over. He had to go outside.

He advanced warily before stopping in the entrance. The awning over the door would be cover enough for him to move forwards a bit more.

A step. But not too far.

Then another step. Just one.

In the street, midday traffic was roaring along. Heat and daylight joined the unbearable noise, attacking John’s senses. He felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead as soon as he was completely out of reach of the lobby’s air conditioning.

Tuning out the vivid display around him, John concentrated on his breathing, only the noise of his own blood in his ears remaining as his heart brutally pumped it through his body – with the exact frantic heartbeat that Sherlock had catalogued this morning.

John froze. _The heart._

Panic commanding him to run and remain where he was at the same time, John gasped for air but couldn’t breathe. His ribcage wouldn’t expand, his lungs felt constricted, but he needed air … more air … Dizziness started to blur his vision, focusing his eyes somewhere beyond the taxi at which he was staring.

 _Sherlock’s heart –_ _the reason why Moriarty made me wear the explosives, that’s what Moran meant when he said Sherlock had burnt his own heart, I’m his…_

The thought ended abruptly, brought to a standstill by a thud to his chest that John recognized from a similar hit to his shoulder once. Only this time he didn’t land in hot desert sand but instead felt the synthetic fibre of hotel carpeting on his cheek before the world disappeared.


	16. The light

‘Monsieur?’

John groaned, attempting to make sense of the confusion of French voices that accompanied that question. Hands wanted to drag him up or tugged at his jacket and, when his eyes were used to the light again, he gripped one of the arms that was reaching out for him and let himself be helped up.

‘C’est rien, vraiment, c’est ... erm ... trop chaud. Merci, merci bien,’ he stuttered, trying to calm the group of people, yet they didn’t want to let go of him. The feeling of pressure on his chest – as if someone had directly hit him with a hammer – made even shallow breathing excruciating, but John managed to muster enough strength to disengage himself and stumble through the lobby and into the lift.

_God, if I’d been given a choice, I would’ve taken Afghanistan again._

The air-conditioned military hospital, the relaxed army doctors – and not to forget the perfectly dosed opiates that took away the pain until there was only a faint hint of it left.

John suppressed the urge to cough, but even the slight strain on his muscles sent a stab of pain through his chest.

‘Fuck,’ he breathed and started hunting in his pocket for his mobile at the same time. There had to be a message by now.

The locked screen gave no indication and, when the lift’s door opened, John had to force himself to step out, overriding the drive he felt to leave the hotel immediately and start searching for Sherlock.

_He has my weapon. And he’s Sherlock bloody Holmes, damn it!_

Quickly, John steered towards his room and entered it, tearing off his jacket before he had even closed the door. With shaky fingers, he started fighting with the fastenings of the waistcoat.

‘Calm down already,’ he commanded himself. The sodding thing had caught the bullet, no matter if there was a bruise as big as a volleyball forming.

His mobile pinged and John let go of the fasteners to rummage around in the jacket he had thrown on the bed. Every movement was pure torture but all he could think of was that it could be Sherlock. It _had_ to be him.

_Opposite the hotel, No. 15, 3rd floor, middle. SH_

John read and took a painful, deep breath against the hard material of the waistcoat, relief coursing through him like a drug.

Sherlock had him. He had caught the sniper and maybe there was a chance to end all of this.

John ripped open the last Velcro fastener. He didn’t want to see how much the material had been deformed by the impact and instead dropped the bulletproof waistcoat on the bed, next to the jacket with the tiny hole in the front.

Pocketing the mobile, he briefly considered taking a painkiller but decided against it. He should get to Sherlock as quickly as possible, so he grabbed his cap and left his room to return to the ground floor. Instead of taking the front exit, though, he went into the Gents and climbed out the little window with some effort. The side street would first lead him away from the square in front of the hotel, but after some turns, John once again approached it from the south.

He cautiously peeked around the corner. The cobblestone square had lost its forbidding atmosphere and John couldn’t help feeling almost exhilarated when he walked past the shops lining it towards number 15.

At first he thought he wouldn’t be able to get in, yet the sturdy door’s lock seemed to have been tampered with and, after a push, John entered the building. He met no one on the tiled staircase and the hallway on the third floor also was empty. No sounds, no alarm had been raised – a good sign.

The door to the flat in the middle of the hallway also was unlocked and John inched inside.

‘Sherlock?’ he whispered as he took off his cap. No reply. John closed the door.

A strange voice from one of the rooms along the narrow hallway reached him, but before he could pin down its origin, the noise became something resembling a muffled scream.

Alarmed, John backed against the wall to shuffle forwards and cast a glance into the first room. A kitchen.

Something crashed nearby and John threw caution to the wind. The noise came from one of the rooms to his right. After another failure – a closet – he finally arrived at the right place.

‘I’m waiting,’ Sherlock said, but not to John, who had just entered the bathroom. Instead he addressed the extremely battered looking man whose hands were tied to the pipe of the sink, long, curly hair failing to hide the cuts in his face.

‘Fuck you,’ the young man on the floor spat.

‘Tsk … language,’ Sherlock reprimanded him. ‘And not exactly what I wanted to hear. You need a better incentive.’

‘Nothing will –’ but Sherlock cut him short by stuffing what looked like a large face flannel into his mouth. He got up and pulled the line out of the drying rack leaning against the wall. Grabbing the man’s foot and winding the line twofold around his ankle, Sherlock knelt on the leg to keep it from moving away from him.

‘What are you …? Can I help?’ John asked, but Sherlock just shook his head. He pulled until the man’s leg was straight and then tied the line around the toilet bowl drain.

‘I need something ... perhaps a ... yes!’ Sherlock mused and then headed out of the room before coming back with a large book. Before John could ask what he needed it for, Sherlock had stuffed it under the man’s leg. John opened his mouth to speak, but that was the moment when Sherlock stepped back and jumped, landing on the sniper’s lower leg with the entire weight of his body. John heard bone break with a dull crunch, the barely audible but still sickening sound underlined by the muffled scream of the man on the floor.

‘The tibial shaft,’ Sherlock declared, unmoved. ‘Going by the sound, it’s a clean break, but if you want it splintered, I can help you out.’

The sniper was breathing heavily, likely trying to process the pain. Sherlock kicked against his foot, each movement producing more agonised sounds from the man. Only when the sniper’s eyes rolled back in his head, the pain on verge of making him black out, did John come to his senses.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he ground out. Sherlock turned his head and looked at him for the first time since he had entered the flat.

‘What’s necessary,’ he growled, locking his gaze to John’s.

After a moment of silence in which John couldn’t think of anything to say, Sherlock turned back to the man.

‘I want access to your phone,’ he hissed, getting a vehement shake of the head in return.

Sherlock looked at the man thoughtfully before, without warning, stepping on the broken leg. The sniper let out another muffled scream, his body contorting in agony. John gulped and inhaled deeply, fighting his own disgust. _It’s the circumstances,_ he told himself. _And I promised him that I wouldn’t judge him for what he had become in those two years._

It was too late for doubts now, John knew, but he still felt his fingernails dig into the palms of his hands when he saw Sherlock kneel on the leg and grip the man’s face to force him to look him in the eye.

‘Type in those numbers!’ he snarled. ‘The moment this phone’s unlocked, I will stop.’

He held the mobile within the sniper’s reach and the man used a violently shaking hand to punch in the code.

‘Yes!’ Sherlock exclaimed as he jumped up. ‘Now we only have to lure Moran out of his hiding place.’

John wasn’t sure if the manic grin he now saw on Sherlock’s face differed much from the ones he had seen worn by Moran and Moriarty, but the sniper’s still-muffled rant distracted him from his analysis.

‘What do you have to say to us?’ Sherlock asked, removing the gag.

‘Seb will never fall into your trap, you fuckers,’ the sniper spat, fighting against the ropes as if he was possessed, even as he winced with every movement. Sherlock looked at the man disdainfully until he suddenly swooped down on him like a hawk on his prey.

‘Emotions. Interesting, but why?’ he muttered, scrutinizing the man’s face as if it would provide the answer.

‘Ah, yes, of course!’ Sherlock straightened. ‘How could I have overlooked that? Moran has curls, too, only his hair is too short to see them. The eyes that are too close together. And the same sulcus nasolabialis – although not that pronounced yet because of his youth. They’re related! Judging by the vehemence of his outburst, I’d even say they’re brothers.’

The strained silence of the man on the floor seemed to confirm Sherlock’s theory and the detective started to type a text message into the sniper’s smartphone.

‘What are you writing?’ John asked.

‘Mainly nonsense, as if he were barely alive. It’s supposed to sound like an aborted cry for help ... Moran has to expect the worst.’ He sent the text. ‘Now we’re waiting.’

He brutally stuffed the flannel back into the man’s mouth and rose again.

‘Missed this already?’ he asked John.

‘I ... I don’t know,’ John said, looking down and barely withstanding his doctorly instincts to help the man.

 _Maybe I’ve been out of the running for too long,_ flitted through his head.

‘You’ll need this now,’ John heard. Feeling the familiar weight of the Walter pressing against his hand, he automatically closed his fingers around it.  

‘The gun. Yes … yes, you’re right,’ he said and breathed in, adrenalin happily flooding his veins at the contact with the metal. Who was he fooling? Of course he had missed this.

‘Speaking of brothers, what did Mycroft say when you phoned him?’ John asked, pushing the weapon under his waistband.

At first, his only answer was a pronounced frown.

‘He was practically overjoyed, as expected,’ Sherlock growled after a pause. ‘Idiotic cronies of that degenerate bon viveur Hoffner. Why did they have to spoil the puzzle? It was too easy, much too easy.’

‘Well, I guess Mycroft freeing Greg is the essential point here.’

‘But such a beginner’s mistake! The sheet they used to cover the space behind him showed the shadows of exactly the furniture that we found in the basement in St Remèze.’

Shaking his head in annoyance, Sherlock calmed himself down and then motioned for John to leave the room.

‘You wait behind the flat’s door; I’ll stay here.’

John hesitated before he turned to go. Perhaps Sherlock would say something more than just the usual instructions. His furrowed brow made it clear that this wouldn’t be the case, and only when John had stepped into the hallway did he hear Sherlock speak.

‘We have to do something about the fact that you can still walk, don’t we?’

John winced and shut out the ensuing noise. Still, anguished, muffled cries followed him to the entrance and he tried to focus on something else.

 _Concentrate,_ he ordered himself whilst crouching behind the door. What Sherlock was doing in the bathroom wasn’t important now. The tiny voice at the back of his mind that told him to open his eyes to how deranged his friend had become during his absence was quickly silenced by the anticipation coursing through him.

Barely daring to breathe, John remained poised to attack, but his legs were starting to cramp when the door finally was opened. No one entered, though.

‘Stephen?’ Moran’s voice, but still no steps into the flat. ‘I know you’re here, Holmes, and I’m prepared to sort the matter out with a good old-fashioned shooting. However I thought we had established that we were beyond such crude measures.’

Sherlock stepped out of the bathroom.

‘No reason to become overly dramatic, Moran.’

‘Where’s Stephen?’ It was more a threat than a question.

‘Here, with me.’

‘I want to see him.’

Sherlock briefly disappeared from view and then Stephen Moran was hurled to the middle of the hallway. He lay there, alternately swearing and moaning through his gag as Sherlock aimed the sniper’s rifle at him.

‘Very clever, Mr Holmes,’ the elder Moran’s voice sounded through the flat, ‘but I don’t suppose you want to give your life taking my brother’s, so we’ll postpone this confrontation. Stephen, get up!’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible,’ Sherlock said smugly. ‘Unfortunately, young Mr Moran has broken his shinbone _and_ an ankle. Awfully clumsy, really, and on different legs even. It’s impossible for him to walk.’

John took in his satisfied countenance, noting that Sherlock was loving this even more than he had in the old days.

 _Concentrate,_ John reminded himself, although the sneer slowly spreading on Sherlock’s face made his blood run cold. Shifting imperceptibly, he hoped that he was at least marginally aiming at Moran.

‘It seems I need a guarantee for my brother’s return then,’ Moran’s booming voice interrupted John’s thoughts. ‘Dr Watson, would you please accompany me? I’m pointing a weapon at you and I suggest you leave your position behind the door in three, two –’

John jumped up. He stepped out of his hiding place, throwing Sherlock a questioning look, but there was no reaction.

‘Sherlock?’ John asked. He felt his pistol being ripped out of his hand and Moran searching him, but John kept his gaze on Sherlock’s emotionless face. The mask of indifference stayed firmly in place when John’s smartphone shattered on the tiles and he stumbled backwards through the door, dragged along by Moran.

His last glimpse of Sherlock, though, before he was prodded down the hallway, was the one that burned in John as he descended the staircase.

It had been utter desperation.

 _Fuck,_ John cursed inwardly, trying to suppress the hopelessness spreading in him. _This won’t be the end, damn it!_

Moran’s weapon now in his back, he only just avoided falling down the stairs and tripping over irregular cobblestones. Moran pushed him head first into a car and made him scramble across the passenger’s seat to the driver’s seat.

‘Now go, doctor, but not too quickly. We don’t want to attract any attention, do we?’

Moran gave John the key and motioned for him to start the engine. Backing out of the parking bay, John tried his best to concentrate on the traffic, but the chaotic French drivers were already unbearable, even if he hadn’t had a gun in his ribs.

When they turned onto a road leading away from the city and Moran stopped throwing directions at him, John allowed himself to relax a little. The landscape became more and more rural, with little cottages dotting the green hills. John was already wondering how much farther they would drive when Moran flicked his hand to point the gun at a bumpy farm lane.

‘Turn off here.’

John steered the car up the path that wound its way through pine trees until they reached a clearing with a wooden hut.

‘Well, our little journey has come to an end,’ Moran said as John stopped the engine. The words triggered every flight instinct John had and he fought the urge to do something stupid because, if he were lucky, Moran really cared whether his brother lived or died.

‘You know, doctor.’ He sunk into his seat, still aiming the pistol at John. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to come into my firing line for quite some time now. Since our trip to the swimming pool there hasn’t been an opportunity to meet again – a real shame. But, first, I would like you to step out of the car.’

Slowly they got out, always facing each other, and Moran met John at the driver’s door, beckoning him to take the gravel path to the house.

‘Be my guest. I admit, it doesn’t look like much, but it has great potential. Reminds me of Jim and me in the beginning,’ Moran mused. ‘Oh yes, there was so much he could’ve achieved.’

‘You mean apart from excelling in the art courses at the loony bin?’ John bit his tongue, but it was too late. Hellish pain exploded at the back of his head and brought him to his knees.

He cursed his need to think and breathe. No matter how much adrenalin was swamping his system, it wasn’t able to dampen the effects of his aching chest and the blow on the neck at the same time. He tried to stand up, but it was impossible.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Moran shouted. ‘If I’d had my way, you’d have been dead that night at the pool. But no, Jim had plans, he wanted some entertainment … and when I could’ve offed you at Barts, I had to lay low instead, as some kind of a last resort. Bullshit!’

John stopped trying to get up and started listening. What on earth was Moran blathering on about?

‘Imagine the gratification! The doctor shot before the eyes of the almighty detective, who would’ve had to watch from the roof, helpless. Ha! Never had I expected that arsehole to really jump, just to stop the men’s orders!’ The voice came nearer and hate settled down on John’s neck. ‘If it had been me up there, I would’ve killed you regardless, you bastard.’

John stared. He could see an ant searching for food between the stones, purposefully avoiding the small patches of grass. As if he were looking through a magnifying glass, everything was suddenly crystal clear.

The fall, the lies, the distance – they all were connected. Sherlock had disappearedto save him and had done everything possible to get rid of the remaining threat afterwards.

 _He did what had been necessary. Just to keep me safe, to let me live my life_ he _had made possible._

A life built on the ruins of Sherlock’s existence.

John tried to get his faculties together to block the pain because, now that he saw the light at the end of what had felt like a never-ending tunnel, he would make sure this experience wasn’t cut short by the weapon at his back.

He slowly moved his fingers and then, as fast as he could, threw a fist full of sharp gravel into Moran’s face. The few moments it took Moran to clear his eyes were all John needed to grab the man’s legs and topple him.

Hoping that the anger that drove him could level the unfair differences in their height, John felt his fighting skills kicking in with no hesitation. He clutched Moran’s weapon with both hands while ducking to avoid a choke hold. Moran managed to snake an arm around his throat regardless and there was just one way out. John bent his head, almost suffocating himself in the process, and then rammed his skull against the face behind him. It diverted Moran’s attention long enough for John to guide the weapon around his body.

He used Moran’s finger to pull the trigger and a shot sent its recoil through his hand and rang in his ears. Their bodies fell apart. Only then did John realise that yet another part of his body was aching. Holding his side, he hoped it was just a graze.

There was no time to check, though. Turning tail and running towards a stack of firewood, John didn’t look back to see if Moran was still lying on the ground. The only thing of importance was the fact that the other man had the weapon in his hand and John had barely covered half of the distance when a shot was fired and the bullet hit the ground right next to him. Panicking, he dragged his body uphill until he could skid behind the wood.

Going by the sound, Moran had started the engine and when John peered over the pile, he saw the car reversing down the dirt road. A turning manoeuvre betrayed the driver’s difficulties with steering – and then Moran was gone.

John leaned against the wood and looked at his left side: The shirt was done for, but the wound had already stopped bleeding.

 _Cheating death twice a day’s a bit much, even by my standards,_ he thought, squeezing his eyes shut. He suppressed a minor anxiety attack and focused on the most important thing, namely getting hold of a phone. With some difficulty he stood up and cautiously walked downhill, always trying to avoid jolts that would increase his pain even more.

It turned out that getting rid of the helpful Frenchman who wanted to drive him to the nearest hospital was the hardest part of finding a phone. After he quickly texted Sherlock to tell him where he was, John convinced the Frenchman that his friend would take him to hospital when he arrived.

Walking back up the path a bit, John couldn’t shake the impression that every bone in his body hurt. He just made it to a small meadow and sat down in it, thankful that he at least didn’t have to fight off further unwanted help there.

Staring at the street cutting through the charming landscape, John felt tiredness gripping his maltreated body. Car after car passed the exit to the narrow lane leading up to him until a battered compact turned onto it and sped up the dirt road. John waved, prompting an immediate reaction as the car stopped and Sherlock clambered out of it to run uphill.

Barely panting, he arrived at John but appeared to stop breathing altogether when he saw John’s wound.

‘It’s okay. And Sebastian Moran?’ John asked to change the topic and make Sherlock exhale.

‘The French police will get him.’

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ John snorted. ‘Greg?’

‘Already in Marseille.’

It seemed as if, despite his lack of exertion, even those few sentences had been too exhausting for Sherlock, and he sat down in the grass next to John, staring into the distance. They both fell quiet and, after a while, John lay down in the grass to rest his aching head.

‘You’ve never told me about the last job.’

Sherlock scoffed. ‘Robbing the Monte Carlo Casino.’

‘What? No one robs that casino except in movies. Not even you could do that!’ John laughed although his ribs hurt.

‘I concur,’ Sherlock admitted wryly. ‘Therefore, it was necessary to think of a new plan, but fortunately it turned out that Hoffner’s cronies were as stupid as I had hoped.’

‘But that’s the last time I play the decoy, do you understand?’

‘The assassin could only be lured out of hiding that way.’

John sighed. ‘And the stupid waistcoat held.’

‘It did,’ Sherlock said in a toneless voice.

 _And if it hadn’t?_ John asked himself, sure that Sherlock was thinking the exact same thing at the moment. Without being able to see his face, John could practically feel the strong lines around Sherlock’s mouth. Sherlock’s spine was rigid as he looked at the valley and only the shallow movement of his ribs indicated that he wasn’t made of stone.

‘I got your message,’ Sherlock said quietly.

He turned to fix John with his gaze, his blue eyes and the azure sky blending into each other. John stared back, fascinated by the sight.

 _Perhaps he had been right not to answer it,_ John thought. If that reply had promised just a fraction of what those eyes did at the moment, he might not have left the hotel at all.

_I wouldn’t have risked it._

‘Good,’ John said with a smile, convinced that this was more acknowledgement than he expected. Maybe one day he would hear those three words from Sherlock. Who knew? ‘But there’s something else I have to inform you about. You won’t like it, I’m afraid.’

Sherlock furrowed his brow, but John went on.

‘It might come as a bit of a shock at first but you should blame external conditions for it. It’s clear now ...’ he hoped the pause was heavy enough with meaning, ‘... that you have freckles.’

He didn’t have to demand it for a change. When the sun was blocked and everything suddenly became _Sherlock_ , there was no doubt that, just like the last time, he damn well deserved that kiss.

 


	17. Epilogue

The jet that flew them back to London at Mycroft’s behest left nothing to be desired. Maybe it was even a bit too comfortable, because it gave Sherlock all kinds of ideas. John prayed that Greg, who lay sprawled on the seats on the other side of the aisle, would continue sleeping.

Fighting against Sherlock’s hand under his waistband, John tried to keep his voice down.

‘Christ, Sherlock, what the …’ And there was the other hand. It gently pulled his head from the headrest and positioned it fittingly to be targeted by purposeful lips. _Just a moment, just … I’ll free myself after_ …

Sudden turbulence helped John out of his predicament, distracting Sherlock long enough to extract head and limbs from the embrace. Pouting, Sherlock sunk back into his seat.

‘We’ll be in London in two hours,’ John placated him. ‘Speaking of it, we were so busy being angry with each other that I didn’t get to ask you, well, how you did it ... the fall, I mean.’

The satisfied glint in Sherlock’s eyes told John that he would have to do a bit more than just ask to get that story out of him.

‘At least tell me where you live now.’

Going by Sherlock’s look, this also was a superfluous question, yet for completely different reasons.

‘221B Baker Street, of course. Where else would I live?’

John gaped.

‘You’re joking, right?’

‘Why would I? A rather cheap flat in the city centre, with acceptable furnishings and personal contact with the landlady. It’s a bit big to inhabit alone, though.’

John peered to his right and found a small smile betraying the subtext, although Sherlock was pretending to fully concentrate on the switches above him. That tiny smile was enough to melt the rigidity out of John’s shoulders, slow his racing heart and brace him for the tremendously easy decision he had to make in the near future. Quietly, John started laughing.

‘God, all of this just to take us back where we started from,’ he huffed.

Sherlock let go of the switches.

‘We’re not where we started,’ he declared determinedly and John fell silent.

‘Promise you will never do that again,’ John said after a while. ‘I don’t think I’m up to another scavenger hunt through France to find out you’ve been … considerate. Who would’ve guessed?’

Sherlock compressed his lips, the inscrutable countenance betraying just the slightest hint of self-consciousness.

‘It was worth it, though,’ John added. ‘Sad we didn’t get Moran in the end.’

‘His arrest is inevitable, he –’

‘It doesn’t matter if he’s caught or not, okay?’ John interjected. ‘It doesn’t change anything.’

Sherlock’s countenance darkened. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw something moving across the aisle. Greg had woken up and started to disentangle his long limbs from the seats. Sitting up, he rubbed his temples.

‘We’ll get that bugger,’ he rasped. ‘That’s for sure.’

‘Detective Inspector, you’re awake?’ Sherlock asked in his mockingly cheerful voice and John couldn’t place the cryptic smile that accompanied it. ‘And for how long, if I may ask?’

Greg could also do dark looks and John was sure his would have cut a hole into the fuselage of the plane if it had been in the cabin with them.

‘Much too long,’ Greg managed after a pause. ‘And let me tell you, if you ever do something like that ...’ An undirected hand movement replaced the finer details. ‘... ever again while I’m present, I’m afraid that I’ll be forced to shoot you.’

He stopped and thought for a moment. ‘No, I’ll shoot myself … Saves me a lot of paperwork.’ Demonstratively, he turned away and admired the view out of the tiny window.

Sherlock had been his wondrously innocent self – his old self – during the whole conversation and John smiled. Whatever had changed in their lives in the past two years, whatever was new, it would merge with the old to make something special. It would take longer than the three days it had when they met, but it would work in the end.

 

Fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much, Batik, for the language magic and for the editing. For the logic where there was none, and for the patience when I didn't show any.  
> I'm forever indebted to you as you made it possible for me to find a bit of peace with season 3 by helping me escape to the post-Reichenbach I envisioned instead.


End file.
